Stakeholder briefing January 2026

A system that transforms the way information is shared among health and care organisations in Devon and Cornwall. 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.

Electronic treatment escalation plan (eTEP)

There are now 35,000 eTEPS in the DCCR and this is growing.

Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust (TSDFT) and Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (Royal Devon) will be live at the end of January. There remain a small number of GP practices that have yet to sign up and we are looking to engage with them to understand the barriers to engagement.

The children’s eTEP is now fully live. Users who are looking to create an eTEP for a person under 18 will see a child TEP. The actual data items vary with age, but this is automatic, and users will only see the items relevant to the age of the child.

When somebody reaches 18 there is a reminder in the dashboard panel that an adult TEP will need to be created. We have produced some specific training material for this and there is a link below in the training update.

Cornwall are in the process of planning their full rollout of the eTEP. This is a significant undertaking and is being led by Paul Abram. No firm dates have been set yet, but there will be communications to stakeholder organisations as the project moves forward.

Access to eTEP’s for South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) is now live and usage is steady at approximately 200 accesses a week. There have also been two accesses ‘out of area’ for patients who had a TEP created in Devon, but who live elsewhere.

For additional information on the eTEP project, contact Jane Bullard at jane.bullard@nhs.net for Devon or Paul Abram at paul.abram1@nhs.net for Cornwall.

Integrated personal care and support planning

Building on the success of the eTEP, Devon and Cornwall ICB’s are working with Gloucester ICB and Derby ICB to build an integrated Personal Care and Support Plan into the DCCR.

This will be a series of forms, as opposed to one large form, and will take advantage of functions available within electronic forms such as radio buttons, check boxes, show/hide content as well as simple text boxes. Core information such as demographics, GP information, medication etc. is already held in the DCCR so will not have to be entered again.

This will be a multi-disciplinary and multi-organisational tool, which can be maintained by the various agencies that interact with a patient/client, as opposed to each organisation having to maintain their own support plans – and inevitably having to ask patients/clients the same questions as they move between care settings. This will not replace the very specific care plans used by many organisations, but the information collected may be used to inform these more detailed plans.

In future this will link to the NHS App so that patients can view and potentially interact with the forms to add information. Initial tests have been undertaken to investigate the use of what is called Ambient Voice technology, where a conversation can be recorded and using artificial intelligence converted to text and added to the correct areas of a document.

It is early days of the development and as the project progresses further information will be provided.

Stakeholder news

The system now has 320 partner organisations who have signed the Data Sharing Agreement (DSA), and over 50,000 users.

Not all signatories of the DSA are fully live, and the aim is to have everyone fully on board, so if there is anything we can do to assist, please contact the DCCR team.

In the new year we will be embarking on a campaign to get more organisations signed up following the full implementation of Multi-Factor Authentication (see below). Look out for ‘Connect for 26’ information.

University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (UHP) now have Discharge Summaries live, and Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT) are in the process of surfacing more documents into the DCCR and you will see the number of documents for their patients increasing early this year.

Royal Devon is now publishing admission, discharge and transfer information, as well as outpatient appointments and attendances.

A full list of participating organisations can be found on the website and organisations who are not already signed up but wish to participate can e-mail d-icb.devonandcornwallcarerecord@nhs.net and you will be contacted with information about how to engage with the programme.

Break Seal

As part of the go-live for Royal Devon sharing admission, discharge and transfer information, there is a now a Break Seal feature for some of their patients. This does not mean that a user cannot access the record, but a reason is required for the access. The reasons are selected from a drop-down list and are:

• Deceased Patient
• Medical emergency
• Safeguarding concern
• Statutory / legal requirement
• Ongoing clinical care
• Other [Blank text box then appears for a reason to be entered]

A mandatory comment box will appear when selecting the following options:

• Deceased Patient
• Safeguarding Concern
• Statutory / legal requirement
• Other

Break Seal is applied to patients that in Royal Devon’s view require an additional level of security where access can be separately audited. This may be because the patient is in the news for some reason, is well known, or potentially a vulnerable person.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

In the last bulletin we mentioned that MFA was in place for the support team and we were hoping to have this rolled out for all internet connected organisations using the Portal by late summer. We do now have this working in our test environment, but unfortunately to go fully live an upgrade is required to another part of the system and the deployment of this has been delayed.

We are now looking to schedule the upgrade for the new year depending on how the testing goes.

MFA will only apply to partner organisations who access the DCCR via the portal using an internet connection and will greatly simplify connection as this will not require fixed IP addresses. This will not apply to Launch in Context users, or partners that utilise the secure HSCN connection.

This delay has also impacted our planned rollout to mobile devices, which will now start early this year following the implementation of MFA.

Support

Our support team continue to try and provide the best level of support possible. With so many users spread across many organisations, support for the DCCR is a large task and between January to September 2025 the team had logged 7,000 calls.

These vary from simple fixes such as users locking out accounts to looking into complex network issues. The team will always do their best to respond to queries quickly, but this is not always possible. They will always get back to you though.

If you have any feedback for the support team, complaints or compliments, please contact the DCCR support team leader Hannah Sprague on hannah.sprague@nhs.net.

For user support or general enquiries, you can reach the DCCR Support Team by e-mail, Monday to Friday between 8am to 5pm. rcht.dccrsupport@nhs.net

Information governance

Audits have highlighted a limited number of occasions where individuals have searched for their own records. Following investigation this was found to be for testing and demonstration purposes.

Additional guidance has now been developed, and we have a test patient in the Live system. The NHS number is 999 000 0174 and can be searched for by Portal users.

For Launch in Context users, the test patient needs to be set up in the line of business system, such as TPP SystmOne or EMIS, and then mirrored in the DCCR.

We have already done this for a number of organisations and if your organisation would like us to set up a test patient, please contact the support team via email: rcht.dccrsupport@nhs.net

Training

We have recently added videos for EPIC Launch in Context and the Children’s eTEP and we will shortly be adding a video relating to the use of the eTEP with EPIC.

As we continue to add training material to our website we welcome any suggestions from users as to any additional information that would be useful to: d-icb.devonandcornwallcarerecord@nhs.net

Our training site can be found here: Training – Devon and Cornwall Care Record

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.
• 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 here.

Spread the word and get in touch

Please forward this email to any colleagues who might be interested in knowing more about the Devon and Cornwall Care Record. And if you have any questions about the programme or would like to find out more,
email the team on  d-icb.devonandcornwallcarerecord@nhs.net