Wirral Care Record

What is the Wirral Care Record (WCR)?

The Wirral Care Record (WCR) is a new confidential digital care record that is being developed and will include patient health and social care information.

Why do we need a WCR?

Currently, every health and social care organisation holds a different set of patient records. Information in different records may be duplicated or even incomplete. The WCR brings data from different organisations together, so the same information can be viewed. Allowing authorised health and social care professionals to have access to the WCR will improve decision making by care professionals. This will provide patients with safer, more consistent care whether they are in hospital, at a GP surgery or any other place where care is accessed.

Who owns the WCR?

Each partner organisation which includes; Wirral University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Wirral GPs, Wirral Community NHS Trust, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group, and Wirral Council each has their own patient records and are solely accountable for their patient data. Each organisation will share and disclose data to each other as part of the WCR, but will still remain responsible for their own patient data. The WCR is simply a way of viewing the information held by these organisations.

Is this the same as ‘care.data’ or the ‘summary care’ record?

No, the Wirral Care Record is a completely separate initiative, led by the Wirral Partner organisations, outlined above.

What is the difference between the Wirral Care Record, Health Information Exchange and the Summary Care Record?

Summary Care Record (SCR) – a national system provided by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). It provides a copy of key information extracted from compliant GP systems, specifically demographics, medications, allergies, and adverse reactions to drugs. SCR is updated when the source system is updated.

It can be accessed by healthcare staff who are directly involved in a patient’s care e.g. staff in ED, Out of Hours services. There is currently no access to SCR at Wirral University Teaching Hospital. Users have to have an NHS Smartcard to access the system and there is an audit log kept of each access to patients records. Users have to confirm that they have a patient’s permission to see their SCR. If this is impossible then the users has to record this and provide a reason why access was needed.

Patients can opt out of the SCR via their GP practice. They can also decide to have additional information e.g. long term conditions, relevant medical history, healthcare needs and preferences, immunisations, included in their SCR by discussing this with their GP and giving their permission for the information to be included.

Health Information Exchange (HIE) – a system that works on the basis of an Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) system. It is used to make a summary of GP information available to be viewed in the Hospital system. This includes demographics, medical history, test results, procedures, diagnoses, medications and allergies. This is a real time view of the data in the GP system.

It is accessed by healthcare staff who are directly involved in a patient’s care e.g. staff in ED, Consultants who have received referrals etc. It will be available to all clinical practitioner and nursing roles in hospitals. Access is controlled by the level of a healthcare professional’s role. There is a full audit log kept. Users have to confirm permission to view the record or provide reason by access was needed in emergency. Opt outs are controlled in same way as in the SCR.

Hospital data is sent to the HIE repository as its updated and is then made available through a summary view on the GP system. Access is controlled by Smartcards.

Wirral Care Record (WCR) – data is extracted from GP systems, WUTH and the other partner organisations typically once every 24 hours. Data from the hospital and the other organisations will be taken but a summary record will only be created if the GP record is present (and the patient is registered with a Wirral GP and has a Wirral post code). Organisations can determine which data items they consider to be sensitive so that these are not visible in the front end.

There are two main ways of accessing the summary record and the registries – either via a link within the local system or via a web portal.

Audit trails are kept.

Is this a Wirral only initiative?

Yes, the WCR will only include information from health and social care services located on the Wirral. This means that services in Liverpool and Chester such as; The Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Broadgreen Hospital, Liverpool Walk in Centres or Countess of Chester Hospital will not be able to access the WCR. They will still be able to access the information they need in order to deliver care, but this information will be shared exactly how it is now.

Wirral Care Record