GNCR now gives access to GP records to hospitals, mental health, ambulance and out of hours. The programme works with General Practices across the North East and North Cumbria, involving 400 practices, 25 NHS Trusts and Local Authorities, and 12 CCGs saving at least £8m per year.
GNCR used the Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) to create one shared care record for patients across the North East and North Cumbria.
Starting in late 2016, GNCR made 96% of GP records (369 GP Surgeries) available to emergency care, out of hours and mental health within 12 months and scaling fast to 100%. Records are viewed for the purposes of care provision over 130,000 times per month across the North East and North Cumbria. The programme aims to become the most connected and consented healthcare economy in order to become the go-to place for research and innovation.
Background information
The care records system has been rolled out to 14 partner organisations to use the information for data driven improvements and innovations including North East Ambulance Service and 111 service, eight foundation trusts, two mental health trusts and three GP out of hours care providers.
There is an estimated saving of £8m reflected by the figures of 1,000 views per month, saving 20 minutes of clinical time at £5.00 per time.
Once consent has been provided by the patient, health and social care practitioners can use the Detailed Care Record (DCR) service to view real time extracts of information from the patient’s GP record.
Benefits recorded from the GNCR include: accessing real time extracts of information to inform patient care; providing faster care where previously accessed by telephone or fax; and reducing the potential for medication errors and duplication of tests and investigations. This has helped to increase the accuracy of care and reduced duplicate testing.
The Great North Care Record is a way of sharing patient information with health and care staff. It covers the 3.6m people living in the North East and North Cumbria (NENC). It allows information recorded about people’s health and care such as diagnoses and treatments to be shared with different healthcare services. There were two phases to the implementation of GNCR.
Phase One:
Accident and emergency departments, out of hours, ambulance, mental health and 111-services were given access to the GP record. This was the first step in the process towards creating an integrated care record. This was vital to get information sharing agreements set up and for the region to adopt data sharing. Much of the work that has been about building a conducive culture, developing trust, encouraging collaboration, and setting up the networks and teams necessary to implement the next stage of the project. Finally, it was about learning how we bring different sectors and agencies together to work towards a shared vision.
Phase Two:
Currently being implemented and comprising three components/modules
1. A regional Health Information Exchange (HIE) to allow health and care professionals to see information about an individual from across the system.
2. A Patient Engagement Platform (PEP) to let individuals themselves see their own information, set their data sharing preferences and interact with services using the GNCR app, whilst offering the option to opt out of their information being shared within the NHS.
3. A Public Health Management (PHM) system to allow the data collected to be used and analysed in new ways to help manage the health of people across the NENC regions.
