UHD staff

Greater integrated care across Dorset as more feeds from acute hospitals enter the Dorset Care Record

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People living in Dorset can look forward to enhanced coordinated care as further records are joined up within the Dorset Care Record (DCR)

The next tranche of health and social care records came on stream this week. Allergy information from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (formerly Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals (RBCH) and Poole Hospital (PH) will be available to health and social care professionals using the DCR.

It will mean that allergy details from across all of the county’s acute hospitals will be in place. This will be useful for hospital teams who will be able to prescribe medications more safely to patients

University Hospitals Dorset have also added clinic letters into the DCR as well as electronic inpatient and emergency discharge summaries, which will provide clear advice to GPs and social care teams helping to provide ongoing care to patients.

Continue reading “Greater integrated care across Dorset as more feeds from acute hospitals enter the Dorset Care Record” →

Pharmacist dispsensing at a counter

IT Case Study: Community pharmacies accessing the Dorset Care Record system

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Community pharmacy contractors in Dorset are connecting to health and social care records held within the Dorset Care Record (DCR), a type of shared care record delivered as part of the Local Health and Care Record (LHCR).

Background

Primary care professionals, including community pharmacists, have been creating electronic records of their interactions with patients for many years. Previous consideration was given to the NHS creating a national comprehensive records system, collating information from different types of care settings, but the NHS Long Term Plan changed the focus to continuing and expanding the LHCR projects being undertaken across England.

Shared care records pull together information on a patient from several sources, such as GP and hospital records, so they contain extra information compared to the NHS Summary Care Record. In time it is hoped that pharmacy systems may be able to display medicines information from shared care records and more professionals across multiple care settings will be able to share their patient records held in their clinical systems via shared care records.

Continue reading “IT Case Study: Community pharmacies accessing the Dorset Care Record system” →

DoLS team at BCP

Dorset Care Record: Allowing colleagues to work more efficiently

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Over the past few months, usage of the Dorset Care Record (DCR)  at Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council has been growing strongly. We caught up with Carol Bensley, BCP Council Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) business support officer, who accessed the highest number of records across the DCR partnership last month.

Carol is a firm advocate of the DCR: “I absolutely love using DCR; it makes my job so much easier and allows me and my colleagues to work more efficiently. Whether that’s checking which ward a patient is on in hospital, or even just double checking a home address for someone who is currently unknown to BCP – to ensure that they qualify for the services available. Continue reading “Dorset Care Record: Allowing colleagues to work more efficiently” →

Community pharmacy FAQ

FAQs for Community Pharmacies

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As part of our ongoing engagement with community pharmacies, we have developed a Frequently Asked Questions sheet which is available on the Dorset Local Pharmaceutical Committee (LPC) website.

Community pharmacies are a key area of expansion for the Dorset Care Record this autumn and we have been working with the key industry body the  Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) to increase the number of pharmacies using the DCR. Continue reading “FAQs for Community Pharmacies” →

Video infographic is available on our You Tube site

Updated Video Infographic – Autumn 2020

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We’ve updated our video infographic highlighting our latest developments over the past three months. Changes include:

  • A rise in the number of records accessed to more than 13,000 per month
  • A jump in the number of primary care (GP items of information) being accessed to 6,000+/month
  • An increase in the number of radiology and pathology reports viewed by health and social care professionals to more than 3,000 per month
  • More than 11,000 log-ins by care providers over the past month

You can access this on our You Tube channel https://youtu.be/t8NSabk1zqY

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Hospital pharmacists help drive up use of the Dorset Care Record

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Additional information around medications has led to a huge rise in hospital pharmacists using the DCR – three of the top eight users at Dorset County Hospital can be found at the Dorchester-based pharmacy.

Jiapei Ong became interested in pharmacy while talking to her cousin, a pharmacist in Malaysia. She  liked the way pharmacists worked with patients to improve their care. Jiapei then studied at Nottingham University, ahead of a pre-registration community pharmacy stint around Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire.

Jiapei moved to Dorset County Hospital last summer and is one of 20-30 pharmacists, working with patients in the wards and providing cover in the dispensary. Continue reading “Hospital pharmacists help drive up use of the Dorset Care Record” →

Victoria Park Pharmacy in Dorchester

What community pharmacy access to shared health and social care records could mean for patient care

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In this blog, published in the industry periodical Pharmaceutical Journal, Dorchester pharmacist Robin Mitchell writes about the openings available to pharmacies now that they have access to the Dorset Care Record.

 

When the Dorset Care Record (DCR) launched in March 2018, it brought with it the many potential benefits of having patient information in one place and available to a broad range of health and social care professionals.

It is described as an electronic repository that provides a consolidated view of information from health and social care systems across the county of Dorset, and currently includes information from hospitals and GPs. Continue reading “What community pharmacy access to shared health and social care records could mean for patient care” →

Dorset Council logo

DCR – Providing reassurance for case support coordinators

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Greater integration with health care colleagues, financial efficiencies in cash-strapped times and a reassurance that the information is correct are three benefits being accrued by using the Dorset Care Record, according to a local authority adult services employee.

Sharon Guppy, Case Support Co-Ordinator at Dorset Council, works closely with social workers and occupational therapists and has found the Dorset Care Record invaluable: Continue reading “DCR – Providing reassurance for case support coordinators” →

Wessex Care Records/Orion Health medications hackathon

Hacking further towards medications interoperability in the UK

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Orion Health has been an ardent supporter of INTEROPen, a collaborative group created to unite suppliers and the NHS in the pursuit of interoperability, since its creation in 2016. On July 14th-15th, the company joined forces with Wessex Care Records to take part in the latest hackathon centred on medications interoperability. Here’s what was learnt:

The first morning of the hackathon kicked off with introductory presentations from INTEROPen, OneLondon, Wessex LHCR and NHSX. David Hancock, INTEROPen industry co-chair opened with a reflection on INTEROPen’s journey since 2016, and its continued importance as an organisation in balancing the demand push and the supply pull for interoperability in healthcare. He reflected that INTEROPen is still going strong four years on due to the complexity of the challenge, quoting Bob Wachter, “implementing health IT today is one of the most complex adaptive changes in the history of healthcare, and perhaps of any industry. Adaptive change involves substantial and long-lasting engagement between the leaders implementing the changes and the individuals on the front lines who are tasked with making them work.*” With INTEROPen’s mix of both vendor and NHS leadership and membership, the organisation is uniquely placed to encourage testing and adoption of emerging standards across the board. Continue reading “Hacking further towards medications interoperability in the UK” →

Case studies come from a range of Our Dorset partners

Case study analysis: Why partners are using the DCR and how they are benefitting

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With 1,700 trained health and social care professionals now able to use the Dorset Care Record (DCR) and 11,400 records accessed last month, we’ve been looking at the areas where partners find real benefits and highlighting comments made in recent case studies.

Preliminary analysis over the past few months has shown that the DCR is widely used by pre-admittance and pre-op clinicians and by specialist respiratory, kidney and heart consultants across our three acute hospitals.

Across our two local authorities, there is also consistently heavy use from Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard teams as well as occupational therapists, physiotherapists and social workers.

Additional information to help professionals better understand people’s medical history and current situation and quicker, more up to date details, enabling better coordinated and safer care, are often cited as reasons for people using the DCR.

Here are some comments from partner case studies from across the Our Dorset partnership: Continue reading “Case study analysis: Why partners are using the DCR and how they are benefitting” →