DCCR briefing August 2023
Stakeholder briefing
The Devon and Cornwall Care Record (DCCR) enables authorised health and care staff to see details held by a wide range of providers across Devon, Cornwall and the Isle of Scilly in a single record. It gives professionals a more complete view of a patient’s history and is part of a national programme.
Phase 2 and beyond
The DCCR has several new dashboard panels labelled ‘Under Development’ with no content – these include documents, allergies and care plans. This is in readiness for the next phase of content, which will be available in the next month or so.
Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust (RCHT) is finalising volume testing on documents. These will include discharge summaries, advanced care plans, lasting power of attorney and ‘About me’ patient preference and instruction. Go-live is anticipated to be in August. The intention is to increase the range of documents available over time and to include some documents from University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (UHP) over the autumn.
The care plans panel is where the treatment escalation plan (TEP) will appear (and also under the Care Plans menu in the Clinical Document Viewer). More information on the progress of the TEP is included below.
The allergies panel will be used to surface information from GP Connect. There is more information on progress below. At present this panel is positioned at the bottom of the screen, but when live data is available, this panel will be moved to a prominent position at the top of the summary screen.
There are two additional dashboard panels that will be added soon. These will be organisations involved and the names of the last five people to view a record. Timing of this has yet to be agreed but it is anticipated that these will appear in the autumn.
RCHT have also started initial discussions about surfacing medications from both Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and RCHT and will be working on this over the coming months.
We are keen to get feedback from users on how the system could be improved, and the type of information that would be useful to see. While we can’t always deal with all requests – due mainly to the age of some systems that are in use – we will consider all suggestions, and where integration is technically possible, add this to the forward plan.
Roll-out
Roll-out to new organisations and staff groups within existing organisations is continuing, but ongoing operational pressures mean that not all organisations that have signed up are able to undertake the next steps to make their data available or make the system available to their staff. The DCCR are available support any organisation or GP practice as required.
The rollout to social care organisations in Devon is progressing and the DCCR team will be invited to provide a demonstration of the system to care homes in Cornwall shortly. We have taken on board feedback from our initial early adopter to modify some of the NHS-focused documentation to be more inclusive to social care providers.
The 111 service in Cornwall now have access and we have provided access to two independent ophthalmology surgical units who are undertaking work for the NHS.
Engagement is underway with Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, who now have launch in context available in RiO, and RCHT regarding a wider rollout – initially with the junior doctor intake – as well as Devon Partnership NHS Trust in advance of their migration to TPP SystmOne in the late Autumn.
GP Connect
Both structed and unstructured GP Connect data is now available in the DCCR for testing. Most users cannot see this but for those involved in testing the dashboard panels mentioned earlier will be populated. Testing is in the early stages but so far this is working well.
The plan is to go live in the next few weeks with a small pilot group initially, before a wider rollout late summer.
Treatment Escalation Plan (TEP)
The development work TEPs has now concluded and the first of a number of webinars has taken place to commence the wider change management activity.
There are ongoing technical discussions about how we may further integrate the TEP into existing line-of-business systems such as SeeEHR in Plymouth and EPIC.
At a recent meeting of the One South West programme broad, agreement was reached on the preferred technical approach to bringing together information from the other shared care records in the region (Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Bristol, as well as Devon and Cornwall).
This will benefit not only South Western Ambulance Services NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT), but will also allow the sharing of information between the shared care record systems to support tertiary referrals and other out of area/cross boundary care. The next stage of this development is engagement with the various suppliers, and we will report on progress locally via this bulletin.
For additional information, email James Boult at james.boult@nhs.net
The national picture
John Farenden, who led on shared care records for NHS England, has recently left and announcement of his successor is still pending. Hannah Wall, Stakeholder Relationship Senior Manager, will be temporarily taking over and she worked closely with John so there will be some continuity.
Tim Ferris, who is the national director of transformation at NHS England, is standing down in September. He has also been a staunch supporter of shared care records and has been the driving force behind the ambition to link-up the shared care records across England. Dr Vin Diwakar, Medical Director for Secondary Care and Transformation is taking up the role on a secondment until a permanent successor is announced.
Whilst there are national changes in leadership, the direction of travel for shared care records over the next three years is clear and one of the five key national priorities over the next two years is to achieve interoperability between the local systems for national coverage.
Find out more about the DCCR
The programme team has also produced a range of resources to help staff and patients find out more about the DCCR. These include a:
- Quick guide to the DCCR – basic details about the programme.
- Patient communication toolkit – a suite of marketing materials to help organisations inform their patients and service users about the DCCR and its benefits. (download the quick guide and patent toolkit from the DCCR resource)
- Website – information about the DCCR for patients and health and care staff. The site can be found at https://devonandcornwallcarerecord.nhs.uk/
- Training website – supports staff of participating organisations in the use of the DCCR platform. The site includes user guides and short videos and can be found at https://elearning.cornwall.nhs.uk/?p=site/m/devon-and-cornwall-care-record
