Mid Yorks goes live with shared care record | News

The Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust is now providing data to the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record to close data gaps and improve patient care. 

The Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust (MYTT) is advancing the sharing of patient data to support the regional shared care record. This will deliver joined-up patient information to support the provision of excellent clinical and social care and close data gaps across West Yorkshire. 

The Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR) allows clinicians to see information from multiple organisations about patients and use it for direct clinical care. This is a significant step forward in both increasing patient safety and informed decision-making. 

The Trust recognises the vital role that access to appropriate clinical information about a patient plays in safe and effective clinical care. Many patients have care delivered across multiple organisations across the region including the Trust, local authorities, primary care networks, community pharmacies, mental health trusts and voluntary and community social enterprise organisations. It is therefore important to have ready access to such information for clinical and social care staff to provide safe and high-quality care at every contact. 

The types of data being shared by Mid Yorkshire includes patient demographics, inpatient appointments, encounters, emergency department visits and documents including discharge summaries, clinical letters and maternity documents. 

Considerable effort has been focused on ensuring that the processes and information meet the exacting standards of data security by recognising the importance and sensitivity of this data. This work has involved many participating teams across the region working collectively to ensure the achievements meet all clinical safety and cyber security standards with the aim of improving the patient care. 

Mid Yorkshire has delivered the following:

• Enabling clinical and care staff to access real-time health and care information across a range of providers and between different IT systems, securely and safely allowing the right person at the right time to access patient records.
• Improving information that GPs can access via the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record. Often patients move around the region and across geographical boundaries to receive the specialised care and treatment required. This latest development allows GPs across those boundaries to access relevant information about the treatment their patient has received at MYTT – helping to ensure a joined-up service.

Paul Curley, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, said: ‘’We are committed to placing as much information as possible into the hands of patients. We already provide copies of outpatient discharge letters, support pregnant patients to access their records electronically and populate a patient portal. We believe the patient should be at the centre of healthcare, should be involved in all decisions, should have access to the healthcare record and should be confident that important information is available to the clinical staff caring for them.

We are working closely with GP colleagues to ensure that they have greater visibility of all relevant information about care provided in local hospitals, in addition to formal letters sent to them. Many patients will believe that these elements to healthcare sharing are already in place – and they are for certain organisations – but the use of YHCR will further increase the number of organisations who have appropriate rights to see this information."

Dr James Thomas, Senior Responsible Officer for the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership's Digital Programme, said: “One of our priorities is to increase the safe and secure sharing of data across health and care organisations through the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR). That’s why it’s great to see this data sharing project in Mid Yorkshire happening.

Being able to access data quickly, safely and securely will help boost efficiency and make chasing and requesting the same information from the patient a thing of the past. That means health and care colleagues will have more time to spend with the individual ultimately providing a better overall experience for both staff and patients.” 

Nichola Esmond, Service Director – Adult Social Care (Strategy and Transformation), said: ‘’We believe using the YHCR is a step in the right direction, a social worker is able to access the most up to date information about a service user, using the YHCR Portal. This will enable care packages/equipment to be determined quicker, providing access to the appropriate care/equipment. Risks will reduce as the data will be available in ‘real time’ to ensure medication, allergy and immunisation data is available.’’

Richard Main, Head of Digital for the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, said: ‘’For some time, when caring for a patient, our hospitals have been able to securely see elements of the GP clinical record. MYTT going live with sharing patient records allows primary care colleagues to securely view details of the care their patients have received. This will improve efficiency in practices by reducing the number of occasions that general practice teams must contact hospital teams for information, leading to safer and more efficient care for the patient.

At a time when primary care services are under ever growing pressure, this sharing of records will directly benefit the care that GPs can provide to patients. The planned development of wider sharing of relevant and appropriate information with our Pharmacies and Social Care will then start to deliver better more joined up services to residents of Wakefield and Kirklees.’’

Lee Rickles, Programme Director at Yorkshire and Humber Care Record, said: “The Yorkshire and Humber Care Record is a major step forward in the way we share health and care information across the region. It will make it easier for patients to get the best possible care, as their health information will be available to the right people at the right time. This will help to prevent errors, improve decision-making, and make care more efficient.

I am proud that Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust is go living with the YHCR. We believe that this system will have a real impact on the quality of care that we can provide to our patients."