Coordinate My Care launches online patient portal

An online portal where patients can select their urgent care requirements has been launched across greater London.

Coordinate My Care (CMC) is an NHS clinical service that informs GPs, hospitals, ambulance crews, 111 providers, care homes, hospices and out of hours services about a patient’s wishes for urgent and end of life care.

The record is created by a patient’s clinician and ensures that everyone they meet along their health journey knows their diagnosis, how they wish to be managed and what to do in the event that their own doctors and nurses may not be available – for example, in the middle of the night.

The new myCMC portal, which uses InterSystems’ unified health informatics platform HealthShare, allows patients to arrange their own urgent care plans online for the first time.

In the event of their condition deteriorating, patients can specify the treatment they want as well as where and when they want it.

They can also list their key contact information and state if they would like their organs donated.

It is claimed this will save time for GPs, CMC trained nurses and consultants in hospitals, communities and hospices, who meet with the patient to complete their already started plan and approve it.

Information in the plan can then be shared across urgent and emergency care providers.

The new myCMC patient portal is now available for use in the greater London area. CMC will be seeking feedback from clinicians and patients during an evaluation period throughout 2018.

Professor Julia Riley, clinical lead at CMS, said: “Empowering patients to tell NHS and care providers the care they want to receive at a crucial point of their life is a priority. As care providers we have a responsibility to coordinate our services around patient wishes – especially when they are faced with difficult diagnoses that may require urgent or end of life care.

“CMC has already had a big impact for many patients, but there are many more who are still inappropriately sent to hospital when they do not want to be there, causing distress for patients and pressure on the system. MyCMC is accessible online and will allow many more patients, families and carers, to set up plans that can make a huge difference to their experience.”

Last month, Digital Health News reported how the use of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) in selected integrated urgent care settings was being piloted across London in a bid to free up time for doctors and healthcare workers issuing prescriptions.