This is an information standard commissioned by NHS England from the Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) with the intent to enable social prescribing support provision to be recorded, amended and maintained collaboratively between patients, link workers and health and care professionals.
Social prescribing and community-based support is part of the NHS Long Term Plan’s commitment to embed universal personalised care across the health and care system. Personalised care means people are given choice and control over how their care is planned and delivered, determined by ‘what matters’ to them based on their individual strengths and needs. Social prescribing enables all local agencies in an area to refer people to a social prescribing link worker to receive the care they need. Self-referral may also occur.
Social prescribing link workers give the people receiving care time to understand what matters to them and allow appropriate connections to community groups, services, and activities for practical, social and emotional support services, for example working with a gardening charity. Social prescribing and community-based support addresses the wider determinants of health, recognising that not all health difficulties can be treated through traditional medical approaches.
Phase 1 of a the Standard enables social prescribing support provision to be recorded, amended and maintained collaboratively between patients, link workers and health and care professionals. There is no data flow or publication associated with this phase of the standard, it describes the underpinning principles and expectations for capturing data across care settings.
Phase 2 of the Standard, a future release, will specify sharing of the recoded data using FHIR messages and possibly a data collection.
This information standard is published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. An Information Standards Notice (see below) provides an overview of scope and implementation timescales, and the requirements specification provides further detail for those who have to implement the information standard.