Issue being addressed:
The Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) Care Record is bringing together people’s separate health and care records into a structured, easy-to-read format all in one secure place. This is giving health and care professionals directly involved in an individual’s care a more complete view of the care and treatment that they are receiving across all services.
Previously, in LLR, just as elsewhere across the country, local health and care services held their own separate records about their local population. Organisational IT systems were not connected and information could not easily be shared electronically with each other. This caused care and treatment delays, with organisations having to forward important facts by phone, email or on paper. Clinicians within the health service could not see the care and treatment provided to their patient from colleagues in other organisations, while workers in social care could not see the latest information from within the health service. Care was disjointed and it often left the individual having to repeat themselves to several different care professionals.
Action taken:
The LLR Care Record was set up to achieve a number of aims, including:
- An integrated portal for health and care professionals that is accessible from existing systems
- Information from different care settings being displayed in one secure and safe system
- Reduced staff and citizen frustration and reduced delays in care
- Improved working between members of multi-disciplinary teams and across the different stages of care pathways
- Streamlined communication between services
- Greater visibility of social care packages across care settings
- Less duplication of tests and referrals for the individual.
Launched in spring 2022, the LLR Care Record has been rolled out across adult social care in Leicester City Council, Leicestershire County Council and Rutland County Council, and to East Midlands Ambulance Service. Rollout is progressing in Leicestershire Partnership Trust, University Hospitals of Leicester, Patient Care Locally CIC, and pilot usage in GP practices (Forest House, Ibstock and Woodbridge), LOROS hospice and community pharmacies.
Outcomes:
The LLR Care Record is now live for more than 5,000 users.
More than a million people’s records are now accessible on the LLR Care Record to professionals directly involved in their care.
Feedback is showing that not only is the LLRCR saving people’s time, it is helping them to have better, more informed conversations about individuals with their colleagues, improving patient care.
Feedback from colleagues in Leicester City Council’s West 4 adult social care team has been particularly encouraging:
“The team are all very excited to be in at the beginning of such a ground-breaking initiative.”
“The LLR Care Record provides quick and easy access to information that previously was only obtainable by contacting the person’s GP or GP practice – this was extremely time consuming and usually involved a lot of time spent in a telephone queue and then having to contact again to receive the response to the request. The LLR Care Record is quick and direct – it eliminates all of those delays and frustrations and provides access to very detailed and specific information about an individual’s health.”
Senior representatives from the national Connecting Care Records programme visited Leicester in October 2023 to discover the progress being made in implementing the programme locally. The high-level delegation joined a round table discussion hosted by Leicester City Council where they met members of the programme team.
Following the visit, Dermot Ryan, NHS England’s Senior Responsible Owner for the Connecting Care Recordsprogramme, said: “As part of the wider network of Connecting Care Records across England, LLR are making great progress with the LLR Care Record. Their system aligns well with the ambitions of our national programme, including connecting in social care and building on standards that will support future information sharing across borders. It was great to hear from local early adopters about the positive impact the system is having for staff and local people, and how we can build on this together.”
The LLR Care Record received three awards nominations in the 2024 HSJ Digital Awards.
To find out more about the LLR Care Record, visit the LLR Integrated Care Board website – https://leicesterleicestershireandrutland.icb.nhs.uk/your-care-record/
An animated video can be viewed – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJXiuPaDb28 – explaining key aspects of the programme.
To contact the LLR Care Record Programme team, please email: lpt.llrcarerecord@nhs.net