Shared care records need to take a patient-centric approach to prevent harm and save lives.<\/p>\n
In his DCR webinar presentation, John Farenden provided some detailed case studies, highlighting past failings, which had led to coroner\u2019s reports highlighting the inability of health and care organisations to share information properly.<\/p>\n
Farenden, NHS England Senior Programme manager for national shared care records, touched on a range of tragic cases:<\/p>\n
Farenden challenged his audience on the webinar: asking, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we see these as never events\u201d, which can be prevented. \u201cPeople\u2019s information can be shared and we can save lives and prevent harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
He touched on his 94 year old mother-in-law Clare, who had had contacts with lots of different health and care services. In 12 months, Clare had 24 different providers but none had a complete picture of her whole life. Suffering from Alzheimer\u2019s, the provider said they were not getting much response. The reason was they using her first name, Mary, and she always went by her second name Clare: \u201cShe didn\u2019t respond to Mary because it wasn\u2019t her name\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also spoke of the case of Branwen, a teacher in London, who has contributed to the \u201cOne London\u201d initiative. She felt unwell after a minor operation but encountered lots of services and struggled with lack of joined up care. She said if the clinicians had access to all of her previous appointments it would have been life-changing: \u201cMechanics in a garage have all the information about a person\u2019s car so why is it so hard?\u201d<\/p>\n
Farenden said the concept wasn\u2019t new, highlighting a paper talking about an integrated care record service across health and social care and based around the person that was published 20 years ago.<\/p>\n
He said there was evidence of benefits of shared care records \u2013 by looking at people holistically and one record \u2013 both the length and quality of life was enhanced.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to encourage us all to think more about the person and less about the provider.\u201d<\/p>\n
It should be the person\u2019s record that is contributed to and consumed by people in GP practices, hospitals, social workers to which the \u00a0individual contributes to so that they can tell their story once and expect all those in the health and social care system to understand their situation.<\/p>\n
He said a top NHS priority in 2022\/3 is to support the exchange of information between shared care records in place and the wonderful work going on around the country, to help people in an integrated care system and to scale up that work nationally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will enable a Dorset resident that is taken to a Somerset, Hampshire or Devon hospital to know that their treating clinicians have the same access to information as if they went to Dorchester or Bournemouth.\u201d<\/p>\n