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Access to medicines and allergies information improves patient care for Devon Partnership NHS Trust

Access to patients’ medications and allergies information from their GP practice record is improving decision making on prescribing and supporting improved patient care at Devon Partnership NHS Trust. 

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Background

The trust provides a range of high-quality specialist mental health and learning disability services for the people of Devon, the wider south west region and nationally.

In the past it could be challenging, especially on admission or first contact with service users, to understand what medications the person had been prescribed. Some of the information would be available via the Summary Care Record, but access needs a smartcard and not all the team have one. In most cases, the team would request a copy of the patient’s medications list from the GP practice. This was time consuming and receiving information could be delayed especially at evenings and weekends.

Accessing medicines information

Those involved in the development of digital clinical solutions, including Kate Morris, Clinical Systems Programme Manager, had heard about NHS Digital’s GP Connect programme and their Access Record: Structured Medications and Allergies product and thought this could provide a solution to this problem. Implementing this would also align with the trust’s digital strategy objectives to make use of national solutions in achieving digitally informed decisions as part of their overall interoperability drive.

Access Record: Structured (Medications and Allergies) allows access to a patient’s record in a machine-readable, structured, and coded format. It provides clinicians with a full view of the patient’s medications and allergies history quickly and without the need for a smartcard.

After discussions with the GP Connect team, the trust decided to deploy the product via their Havana application on their patient administration system and went live in October 2021.

Benefits of GP Connect Access Record: Structured

The impact has ben very positive. Benefits include:
  • ward nurses save time on requesting information via GP practices for medications reconciliation on admitting patients - this can be between 5 and 10 minutes per admission and will also save time at the GP practice
  • medications reconciliation out-of-hours is no longer constrained by waiting for information from a GP practice
  • patient safety is improved due to access to timely and accurate medications information including a searchable full history

Occasionally a record can’t be viewed if a patient has opted out of data sharing, but staff have been overwhelmingly positive about the change.

 The best and most useful innovation for a long time.
Agree this is a great improvement, which saves me and my secretary a lot of time, not to mention time saved at the GP surgery end when we have traditionally asked them to email us the latest meds.
The ability to use the 'search' function in medications is really helpful as we often don't have all the information on care notes as to what people have had in the past.
Staff feedback was universally positive, from both clinical and non-clinical staff, with reported improvements in both clinical quality and efficiency.

Find more information on GP Connect Access record: Structured.

Last edited: 27 July 2023 3:11 pm