The London Borough of Sutton and NHS Sutton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) have gone live with a CareCentric record solution, initially linking information shared between the council’s social services teams with GPs and Epsom & St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Following the successful go-live, the Sutton Integrated Digital Care Record (IDCR) is now being rolled out more widely, including across community, mental health and GP out-of-hours services. Other near-term plans include completing the deployment of one-click single sign-on access to the record from other health systems, and integrating acute, community and mental health services into the system.
Staff have already been very positive about the impact of shared records and what it means to them in terms of treating patients. Dr Amir Hassan, Clinical Director for Emergency Medicine at Epsom & St Helier University Hospitals, cited an example of when he was able to better support a patient who had presented at the weekend with an overdose. Using the Sutton IDCR he was able to identify the medications the patient could have overdosed on to inform the clinical plan, give antidotes and ensure the patient’s safety. He was also able to identify unusual symptoms and signs. Time was also saved as additional toxicology screens and searching toxicology databases were not necessary.
“We see real benefits in helping providers within health and social care share information effectively,” said Sian Hopkinson, Director of Performance and Primary Care at Sutton CCG. “The vision is all about improving patient care, reducing the administrative burden on frontline staff, cutting emergency admissions and enabling the integration of care around the person being treated.”
