Dorset plans £20m shared record scheme

Dorset is planning a shared care record scheme worth up to £20 million.

A tender notice in the Official Journal of the European Union says a group of nine local social and health care organisations are looking to establish a £2 million to £20 million framework agreement to deliver a Dorset Care Record.

Dorset County Council is leading the procurement. A council spokesperson said the Dorset Care Record is part of its work to integrate health and social care.

The plan is to agree a supplier by June 2016 with full implementation from December next year.

The care record will initially offer direct access for authorised health and social care professionals to “as full a picture as possible of an individual’s history, needs, support and service contacts”, the spokesperson said. The longer-term aim is to offer patient access as well.

The group expects the shared record scheme to enable a number of improvements to patient care including; better co-ordinated care around the patient and their carer in the community; admissions avoidance; better communication to avoid wasted visits; better medicines management; and prompt and effective discharge planning.

The spokesperson added that a number of clinicians and social care professionals are involved in helping to procure the care record system and  ensure it meets required information governance standards.

“This is being done through involvement in the Programme Board, shaping the customer stories at the heart of the specification, participating in scoring supplier demonstrations and hands on testing of potential solutions and leading the design and development of the work,” a statement says.

The contract will be for ten years and the successful system must enable two-way transaction and interrogation of data.

“The Dorset Care Record is intended to push and pull data from all GP practices and health care settings including acute mental health and community services in the county, as well as social care,” the OJEU notice says.

“Staff working in neighbouring counties (Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon) and NHS Trusts, for example Salisbury, Yeovil, Southampton, Solent, may also require access or interoperability where patients cross into different areas to receive treatment.”

Organisations involved in the procurement are; NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group; Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Dorset Health Care University NHS Foundation Trust; The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; the South Western Ambulance Service; Dorset County Council and Borough of Poole and Bournemouth Borough Council.