Four pilots for shared social care records

Three local authorities and one care trust are to pilot links between their social care systems and the NHS Personal Demographics Service (PDS).

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) has announced that Cheshire County Council, the London Borough of Greenwich, Slough Borough Council and Torbay Care Trust have been chosen, in association with Connecting for Health and the Department of Health, to test how to link up social care record systems with the NHS’ PDS.

The aim is to ensure that both services are talking about the same person and provide an important step towards service users and patients only having to tell their story once, and not having to repeat information about themselves to several professionals.

David Johnstone, chair of the ADASS standards and performance network, told EHI Primary Care: “A framework has been put together by us, CfH and the DH, with key principles and this is what the four sites will test for us in a practical way. They are controlled and carefully planned tests, funded by the DH, aiming to ensure that when different systems talk to each other, they come up with the same demographic information about the patient concerned.”

Johnstone says that all four sites use different social care systems, and work has begun to look at issues such as information governance in accordance to CfH’s Care Records Guarantee.

“We have chosen sites with different social care systems so that we can look at the inter-change of information irrespective of the systems they use. Social care has at least ten different systems in the market so it is important that we do not make the link systems dependent.

“This is a very tight programme we are working towards, work has begun and the first issue the sites are tackling is information governance, and finding ways of linking systems which sometimes have differing standards. We have to ensure that every local authority meets the information governance requirements of the NHS and all being well we hope to see linked systems up and running by the end of the year.”

After a year of running live, the system will be independently evaluated. The evaluation will include a rigorous assurance process and will review all aspects of suppliers’ systems from planning and design, through to testing and deployment which will be completed before any further social services systems are linked to the PDS, and eventually to the NHS Care Records Service.

Johnstone said: “The whole thing is to get patients what they want. There is a great deal of frustration amongst patients and staff at all the repeated information they need to enter into systems for every assessment they do. This should be seen as a key step towards a single care record for health and social care.

“Studies show that such a system could introduce significant reductions in the number of unplanned hospital admissions or calls to GP practices, and could help to prevent any costly mistakes – which could be prevented if up-to-date records are immediately available.”

The DH said the pilots would ensure that patients get the best care possible from social carers and doctors any time they need it.

Department of Health director general for social care, local government and care partnerships, David Behan said: “The importance of these projects is not about information systems; it is about giving the best possible care to people, and making sure that patients and public are able to influence the health and social care services they receive. Social care has very well developed electronic care record systems, but each local authority has developed them in their own way.

“These pilots will help us to see what needs to be done to achieve consistency between local authority care record systems and then how to link these systems into the NHS national care record system. The success of these projects and the shared learning they will provide will be a key milestone in integrating health and social care records.”

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