What is the Integrated Care Record?
Your Integrated Care Record (ICR) was created to help Health and Care professionals deliver individual care more effectively by sharing information rapidly and in a more intelligent way. Those professionals can now consider information from other organisations immediately when you go to see them.
The ICR is created from elements of the records created when you engage with Health and Care Organisations such as Social Services, your GP, hospital, paramedics or Mental Health Services. This information can then be accessed by other organisation’s professionals when you go and see them and will give them a much better understanding about what type of support you may be receiving and what you require as part of your individual care. For example, when you visit your GP they may use some of the information held by Community Health to make a better assessment of what treatment is best for you or where some treatment may conflict.
It works by joining up parts of your Health and Care records such as your GP record, Summary Care Record and Social Care Record via a secure computer network which is then viewed by the professional assisting you.
Which organisations are involved?
Your personal information will not be shared with organisations outside the south-west of England via the ICR. Health Care Organisations who are responsible for your individual care, and currently contribute to and can access the ICR, are:
- Bath and North East Somerset Council Social Services
- Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust
- Virgin Care Sevices Ltd within the Bath and North East Somerset area
- General Practices within Bath and North East Somerset
- Medvivo
- Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust
The full list of organisations that have signed the Agreement to do this is maintained by Virgin Care Services Ltd. The list can be requested at any time from Virgin Care Services Ltd from information.governance@virgincare.co.uk.
In addition you can find the information about the organisations that have signed the Agreement on the following web pages https://bathneshealthandcare.nhs.uk/care-in-your-home/adult-social-care and https://bathneshealthandcare.nhs.uk/contact-us/social-care
Whose personal information is shared?
Currently for Social Care this information sharing is limited to adults’ records. However children’s social care information will be shared from early 2020.
Why can't this information be accessed already?
Previously when you engaged with a Health or Care Professional and they made an assessment, they would work out what other care you were receiving from discussion with you. They would then contact other organisations if they needed more detailed information, which would have to be sent by post, fax, email or phone. The ICR will mean that they can view the relevant information there and then, meaning that you don’t have to repeat details of your treatment or care, or remember all of it. This will greatly improve the accuracy of the information that they gather, and allow them to make a more holistic assessment of your care, which will reduce the risk of missing important details that may not have been picked up in discussion.
What information is being shared?
The ICR is not designed to share all the personal information that may be held. Only the relevant pieces of your personal information will be shared to help provide high quality individual care to you. There are different levels of access that individuals and professionals have within the organisations involved in the ICR, which will mean that they can only view the parts of the ICR related to their job role.
Health and Care information may include the following:
- Social Care event dates such as assessments, safeguarding and DOLs
- Care Plan event dates
- Medication that has been prescribed to you
- Contact details
- Allergies
- Medical diagnosis, results, observations
- Radiology and Pathology reports
Can I opt out of the ICR?
Yes, you can, though we do not recommend opting out. The ICR information sharing has been designed to enable us to provide the same type of sharing that currently exists via other means. If you opt out then this will prevent us from being able to use the most effective means of gathering your Health and Care data. This will reduce the quality of service we would be able to provide you. Tight information sharing procedures and checks are in place to ensure your personal information is only shared in appropriate ways with the relevant organisations to deliver to you the highest quality individual care.
You will be offered the opportunity to opt out when you engage with services however you can request that your information be inaccessible via the ICR by contacting: information.governance@virgincare.co.uk.
Can I add my own information to the ICR?
The ability for you to write in your Integrated Care Record is something that we will look to make available in the future.