Posted on: 11 July 2023
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 & 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 Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS 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 patch including the Acute Trust, Local Authorities, Primary Care Networks, Community Pharmacy, Mental Health Trust and Voluntary and Community Social Enterprise organisations. It is 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 MYTT are providing include:
· Patient demographics
· Administrative data associated with inpatient stays and outpatient appointments
· Administrative data associated with Accident and Emergency visits
· Discharge summaries
· Outpatient clinic letters
· Accident and emergency discharge documentation
· Maternity Documentation
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.
Dr James Thomas, Senior Responsible Officer for the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnerships 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) siad; "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.’’