BT2E5W Doctor writing a prescription or medical examination notes Credit: Alamy
FOUR out of five NHS hospitals still keep pen and paper patient records despite decades of efforts to get the health service online, according to an investigation.
Doctors warn the old-fashioned method raises the risk of mistakes or lost notes but said some NHS computer systems are too poor to be relied upon.
Research by the British Medical Journal found 79 per cent of 184 NHS trusts in England still use paper records sometimes.
Three quarters still use paper for prescriptions.
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The report said the “digital transformation” of hospitals and GP surgeries began in 1998.
Some hospitals admitted they had been gradually switching from paper to computer systems for longer than 20 years.
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Last year Labour branded the health service a “technological laggard” and warned it must “reform or die”.
A separate report by the King’s Fund think-tank this week estimated the NHS spends more than £240million per year on storing paper records in boxes and filing cabinets.
Sarah Woolnough, chief of the institute, told The Times: “This is a really flagrant example of money being spent where it doesn’t need to be.
“The NHS in parts seems pretty old-fashioned and out of step with how we interact with services in so many other parts of our life.”
The Jattvibe revealed in 2023 that NHS hospitals were still hanging on to and using more than 600 fax machines.
One trainee doctor in Sussex, Izzie Jordan-Evans, said: “Working in this way in 2026 feels at odds with the pace of modern medicine.
“The time lost locating notes, trawling through pages of text and deciphering handwriting is inefficient and can lead to clinical errors.”
But another medic from Essex, Derya Nurlu, said employers use so many different computer systems that it slows work down.
She said: “It would take me six months to fully master the electronic system I was using each time.”
A spokesperson for NHS England said, “Moving complex hospital services from paper to digital systems across all areas of care takes time, and trusts are at different stages of this process.”
