Medical Records: Staffordshire

Question

At a national level, in partnership with NHS England, the Department is building the foundations for improved information sharing between care and health staff. Digital social care records, that contain a person’s care information, are now in use by more than 72% of Care Quality Commission-registered care providers, from a starting point of 41% in December 2021. We recently set out our ambition that all care providers will be fully digitised by the end of this Parliament.

Within the coming months, all assured Digital Social Care Records will also enable medical information to be shared with social care providers through GP Connect, which provides a restricted view of a person’s general practice (GP) record to social care staff for direct care purposes, where there is consent for the data to be shared. Access to this information improves the quality and safety of care and saves time, currently spent on the phone waiting to speak to GP surgeries.

In Newcastle-under-Lyme and Staffordshire, the One Health and Care shared care record enables medical information sharing for direct care purposes across health and social care. This initiative has been in place since 2020. There is not currently a consistent way for information held by social care providers to be shared, and from April 2025, we will begin work to establish a national shared platform that enables this essential information sharing and ensures health and care staff can access real-time social care, GP, and hospital data, providing access to essential medical information in a timely way. This could include when someone last took their medication, or whether there’s been a change to their care regimen. By linking up systems, NHS and care staff will have access to the latest information, speeding up and improving care both in health and in care settings.