More than 100 health and social care professionals have signed up to the Dorset Care Record (DCR), marking a milestone for the project which aims to create a comprehensive and up to date record for every resident having treatment in the county.
Representatives from all the Dorset Care Record partnership members have completed the mandatory training around consent and security required to access the system, set up in conjunction with tech specialists Orion Health.
Information that can be shared through the system among health and care professionals includes up to date contact details and care needs, lists of diagnosed conditions, medications, allergies, test results and referrals, clinic letters and discharge information.
The 100th health and social care professional to complete the training is Jonathan Williams, Dorset County Council’s Continuing Health Care Advisor. Mr William’s role is to improve how health and social care work together to achieve appropriate outcomes for people across the county.
Mr Williams, who works closely with the NHS and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), in and around Dorset, said ‘The DCR will help ensure people get the right support at the right time. It will reduce a lot of duplication of effort and will make sure accurate information is seen by the right practitioners when important decisions about care planning are being considered. It will help to minimise the amount of time taken to obtain information about health care and other support needs, so that time can be spent focusing on what’s important to the person we’re trying to help.’
Peter Gill, DCR Senior Responsible Officer, welcomed the milestone saying people having treatment in Dorset could look forward to better coordinated care. The DCR represented real investment in the future health of Dorset’s residents, he said.
‘This innovative approach to enable closer working between professionals across health and social care is a key digital element of our wider Sustainability and Transformation Plan to improve outcomes and reduce health inequalities across the county.’
At present, the Dorset Care Record holds demographic data from the county’s three acute hospitals, including name, date of birth, address, next of kin, NHS number and ethnicity. It also contains GP records covering diagnosis, events, examinations, investigations, medication and allergies, procedures and risks.
Alerts and encounters from Dorset County Hospital have also been added, meaning inpatients, outpatients, Emergency Department encounters and alerts are now registered on the DCR. Bringing encounters and alerts into the DCR will benefit GPs, community health and social care professionals who will be able to see records updated in real time.
Mike Sinclair, DCH’s Chief Information Officer, said: ‘The Dorset Care Record was very well received by hospital clinicians when it went live. Being able to see important information relating to the care and treatment people are receiving from their GP as proven really useful in order to support the Emergency Department in caring for people when they come into the hospital as an emergency.
‘We anticipated the wider health economy will also benefit from seeing alerts and encounter information from the hospital when this next phase goes live.
‘Knowing what treatment people have received in hospital, along with what special considerations might need to be taken into account for an individual, will help make sure that targeted and safer care is provided by different teams across the county.’ he added.
Information about the DCR and consent options regarding sharing of records are available through a range of leaflets and flyers in the county’s hospitals, GP practices, local authority buildings and libraries.
The DCR will be rolled out over the next couple of years and will include a people portal, enabling residents to check and add to their individual record.