Transfer of Care Initiative - latest news and updates

1 million messages forecast prior to autumn 2023

In early July, the cumulative count of structured messages received by GP Practices in England exceeded 900,000.

Extrapolation of weekly cumulative volumes predicts over 1 million will have flowed from secondary care to primary care in September.

Symphony test in live environment

EMIS Health’s Symphony solution at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust has undergone testing of its native ability to send Emergency Care Discharge messages.

A GP Practice has now returned the expected application-level response codes.

TrakCare EPR obtains conformance certificate

InterSystem’s TrakCare product has been certified by Solutions Assurance for the Inpatient (Acute) Discharge message type.  

There are now 21 product/organisation combinations that have successfully achieved certification as either a sender or receive of Transfer of Care FHIR messages.

Epro become 20th organisation to gain technical conformance

Solutions Assurance has made Epro the 17th sender-side organisation to receive conformance certification after they successfully tackled Inpatient Acute Discharge and Outpatient Letter use cases.

Three organisations (EMIS Health, TPP and Vision) have receiver side conformance certification for all 4 use cases. The combined technical ability of all these organisations evidences the viability and maturity of the Transfer of Care FHIR APIs for structured correspondence.

Over 800,000 Transfer of Care FHIR messages delivered

As part of business as usual, the GP estates of EMIS Health and TPP continue to receive Transfer of Care FHIR messages covering all 4 use cases.

The total cumulative count of messages sent from secondary care providers has now reached more than 800,000.

Mid Yorkshire now live

After a go-live with a restricted number of wards, Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust has now incorporated all wards into their FHIR solution for Inpatient (Acute) Discharges.

Yorkshire Acute Collaboration

The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust has been awarded conformance certification for their Inpatient (Acute) Discharge FHIR message solution. Their adopted approach has commonality with the Leeds Teaching Hospitals solution.

MESH Workflow Group Reorganisation

It is now possible for a secondary care message sender to utilise more than one independently operating Transfer of Care solution.

Prior to the change the expectation was that all Transfer of Care message types went out through one MESH Mailbox. Although this can still occur, it is no longer essential to do this, and instead a single message type can be assigned to a dedicated MESH Mailbox.

Over 500,000 Transfer of Care messages sent in live

The cumulative count of Transfer of Care FHIR messages received by EMIS Health and TPP GP Practices has now exceeded 500K.

Data Alliance Partnership Board approve standard

The first national information standard, DAPB4042, for Acute Inpatient Discharges has been published. Full conformance is required by October 2022. Other publications for the remaining use cases are planned.

All EMIS GP Practices enabled to receive

The MESH mailbox of each EMIS GP Practice in England has been enabled to receive and respond to Transfer of Care FHIR messages. For the receival of FHIR messages no further GP Practice local setup is required. EMIS Web users in England now need to regularly monitor Document Management within Workflow Manager for incoming correspondence.

Dorset County Hospital are now live nationally

Following important contributions to TPP and EMIS First of Types and continued regional usage of Transfer of Care messages for Inpatient Discharge, Emergency Care Discharge and Outpatient Letters, Dorset County Hospital have now rolled their solution out nationally.

EMIS Health achieve Full Rollout Approval

The use of EMIS Web for handling Transfer of Care FHIR messages has now received full rollout approval for all four Transfer of Care use cases following the successful conclusion of First of Type work.  The efforts of secondary care organisations Dorset County Hospital, Leeds Teaching Hospitals, Oxford Health and Devon Partnership working with over 15 Practices within local and neighbouring CCGs has made this possible.

Practice activation will be done during January 2022 and involves the reconfiguration of MESH Mailboxes to allow the receival and sending of responses to Transfer of Care messages. 

Over 300,000 Transfer of Care messages sent in live

The number of production Transfer of Care FHIR messages sent to GP Practices has now gone past 300K. 

With the enablement of the GP estates of both EMIS Health and TPP, this cumulative count is expected to grow more rapidly in 2022.  Secondary care message initiators can now advance their FHIR correspondence solutions in the knowledge that 99% of GP Practices in England are Transfer of Care enabled.

TPP obtain Full Rollout Approval for last use case

The First of Type for the Mental Health Discharge final use case has successfully concluded and resulted in the award of Full Rollout Approval to TPP.  This completes the missing use case for TPP as the other three use cases achieved Full Rollout Approval in August 2020.  First of Type for Mental Health Discharge was facilitated by the secondary care senders Devon Partnership and Oxford Health.

Essex Partnership University NHS FT gain conformance certification

Solutions Assurance issued a conformance certificate to Essex Partnership for their in-house Mental Health Discharge message solution.  Essex Partnership are now the 7^th NHS organisation to gain conformance certification for Transfer of Care.

Advanced achieve conformance certification as sender

The provider of Docman has been issued with two conformance certificates covering the use of their FHIR Service product for Connect Console and Connect FHIR API.  Both certificates cover Inpatient (Acute) and Mental Health discharges.

Further sender-side conformance certificates issued

An additional two commercial suppliers and Mental Health Trust gained conformance certification from NHS Digital.

These are:

• Cambridge Data Engineering for Universal FHIR
• Streets Heaver for Compucare
• Devon Partnership NHS Trust

All TPP GP practices within Leeds CCG active for IP discharge messages

Leeds Teaching Hospital started the rollout of their Inpatient Discharge FHIR message to TPP GP practices in May and have now added all 90 TPP GP practices within their Leeds CCG catchment area.  

They are the second organisation to commit to live usage of the Transfer of Care API, outside of First of Type, after TPP achieved full rollout approval for their GP practice estate from NHS Digital.  

Secondary Care Commercial Supplier Certification Rises

EMIS Health become the fifth commercial supplier to obtain sender-side conformance certification for their Transfer of Care module associated with the Symphony product.  

This follows previous sender-side awards for one or more use cases to the following commercial suppliers:

• Independent Systems Integrators (July 2020)
• Enovacom (September 2020)
• InterSystems (September 2020)
• NerveCentre Software (April 2021)

Over 100,000 Transfer of Care messages sent in live

Dorset County Hospital have extended their Transfer of Care solution to include all TPP GP Practices in Dorset CCG.  

This has allowed the cumulative message count started (May 2020) during TPP First of Type to now exceed 100,000 messages sent.

Transfer of Care payloads and ITK3 message distribution specifications now at live status

Activities in both First of Type and subsequent wider live usage has resulted in all technical specifications being uplifted from public beta to live status.   

Secondary care provider conformance certification success

A fifth secondary care organisation, Mersey Care NHS FT, working with NHS Informatics Merseyside has successfully completed the sender-side conformance certification process with NHS Digital.  

The following organisations have already gained sender-side confirmation certification for one or more use cases:

• Cambridge University Hospitals NHS FT (October 2019)
• Dorset County Hospital NHS FT (July 2020)
• Oxford Health NHS FT (September 2020)
• The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (September 2020)

All TPP GP practices in England can receive, process, and acknowledge Transfer of Care FHIR messages

All TPP shared GP practice MESH mailboxes were configured, and then local switches enabled by TPP for handling of all Transfer of Care FHIR messages apart from the mental health discharge message type.

TPP awarded Full Rollout Approval for three use cases

Dorset County Hospital working with several TPP GP practices in the Dorset CCG completed a successful First of Type for Inpatient Discharge, Emergency Care Discharge and Outpatient Clinic Letter message types.  

This resulted in NHS Digital granting TPP the right to enable Transfer of Care FHIR messaging for their GP estate for all use cases apart from Mental Health Discharge which must still complete a successful First of Type.

Leading GP Foundation IT suppliers achieve FoT DevMAC

Full First of Type (FoT) Development Milestone Achievement Certificates (DevMACs) were awarded to EMIS and TPP, giving them the ability to enter First of Type for their FHIR receive capability as relevant for Transfer of Care.