Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) has become the first mental health Trust in England to make key aspects of its patient’s records available electronically to other health and social care organisations.
The Trust, which provides mental health and learning disability services across Leeds and beyond, is part of the Leeds Care Record.
The Leeds Care Record has been rolling out across the city for over a year and provides health and social care staff directly involved in a person’s care access to the most up-to-date information about their treatment. It does this by sharing appropriate information from medical and care records between health and social care services across the city.
There are over 300 clinical computer systems in Leeds. They all hold information about patients who have used services provided by their GP, at a local hospital, community healthcare, social services or mental health teams. Each record may hold slightly different information. The Leeds Care Record is bringing together certain important information from all of these systems so that medical and care information held about a patient or service user can be centralised in one place.
Leeds Care Record has now started to share information held by LYPFT about people’s mental health. This follows extensive engagement with service users across the city which has been led by local network Leeds Involving People who asked the views of service users about sharing their records. Overall, the participants were happy for aspects of their mental health information to be shared and that it would make for smoother, more joined-up care and help to improve the decisions made by care professionals.
The benefits of health and social care staff using the Leeds Care Record include:
- better co-ordinated and safer care
- more time spent with patients
- less paperwork
- fewer unnecessary tests
- more accurate prescribing
- better self-management for patients, and
- more efficient use of healthcare services
Dr Nick Venters, Consultant Psychiatrist and Chief Clinical Information Officer at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “It’s great news that our Trust is a national leader on sharing mental health patient records across our local health and social care system.
“This will bring so many benefits to patients and clinicians alike. For patients it means they are more likely to receive the right care and undergo fewer unnecessary diagnostic tests and examinations.
“For clinicians, it means we can be confident we are getting a full and clear picture of a patient’s case history whenever and wherever we see them. This could be in hospital or in a community setting. This means we spend less time searching for the up to date information and more time seeing and treating people. It’s a win win.”
More about the Leeds Care Record
The Leeds Care Record will provide health and social care professionals directly involved in care access to the most up-to-date information. It does this by sharing appropriate information from medical and care records between health and social care services in Leeds.
At the moment, every health and social care organisation has a different set of patient records. These records may duplicate information, or one record might hold information about a patient’s treatment, care and support that another one does not.
The Leeds Care Record is a route that allows clinicians to access certain information directly from the different systems in use across the city. These include GP, hospital and social care records.
What kind of information will be shared?
Examples of information that clinicians will be able to view include:
- Address and telephone number – so we have one set of contact details
- Diagnosis list – to make sure any health or social care professional has an accurate and complete record
- Medications – so everyone can see what medicines have been prescribed
- Allergies – to make sure patients are not prescribed or given any medicines that could cause an adverse reaction
- Test results – to speed up treatment and care
- Referrals, clinic letters and discharge information – to make sure people have all the information they need about other treatment patients are receiving elsewhere
Find out more about the Leeds Care Record at leedscarerecord.org
For more information please contact:
leeds.carerecord@nhs.net or phone 0113 8432900.
Notes to editors
- The Leeds Informatics Board, a group of senior managers and clinicians from across health and social care organisations in Leeds, commissions the delivery of the Leeds Care Record.
- Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust leading the development and rollout of the Leeds Care Record. This secure, web-based application is powered by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust ppm+ platform.
- Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust provides specialist mental health and learning disability services to the people of Leeds and across Yorkshire and the Humber. Visit: www.leedsandyorkpft.nhs.uk
Download this article here: LYPFT-first-to-share-MH-records.doc
