Share for You uses CareCentric to make sharing health and social care records a reality

Photo: Share for You

Share for You uses CareCentric to make sharing health and social care records a reality

People living in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale are to benefit from new technology that will allow their health and social care records to be shared securely with professionals involved in their care.

At the moment, a person’s GP records can be viewed by authorised health or social care professionals securely as part of a treatment plan.

These records are currently shared by phone, fax and through paper records, which are not efficient.

A new digital care record solution called Graphnet CareCentric will allow this to go a stage further.

Using CareCentric, local care providers will be able to view each other’s up-to-date records, providing the fullest picture of that person’s health and social care needs possible.

This means that better and faster clinical decisions can be made about their care. This results in them being treated quicker, without being asked the same questions over and over again. Sharing information makes care safer as clinicians and care professionals will have all of the information (e.g. details of allergies or current medication) which will reduce the chance of errors being made.

Dr Venkatesh Mallya, GP in Littleborough Group Practice and clinical lead for the Share for You programme said: “This technology has the potential to achieve enormous benefits for health and social care as it allows appropriate practitioners to see all the records associated with their patient. It takes the pressure off the patient as they don’t need to recall other details to relay to a new professional and it takes any guess work out of care for the practitioner.”

The roll out of CareCentric is due to ‘go live’ on Monday 3 December and it forms a second stage to the sharing programme known locally as Share for You.

The organisations that will be involved in the sharing arrangement are the GPs within the area of NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Clinical Commissioning Group, Rochdale Borough Council adult care services, the Northern Care Alliance (Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust), Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, BARDOC Out of hours GP services and Springhill Hospice.

There will be further stages to the programme that will link up children’s records that will be accessible by practitioners involved in the care of local children and care homes within the borough.

Share for You recognises that not all people in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale may want their details to be shared in this way. If people have any concerns they can talk to their GP practice and if necessary, they can be opted out of the process via their surgery.

Dr Mallya continues: “Anyone who opts out of the programme will leave their care providers at a disadvantage as it means they won’t have access to as much information as they could to ensure their care is safe and streamlined.”

More details can be found at www.HMRShareforyou.nhs.uk