NHS Digital asks PRSB to create national standard for social care

The Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) has begun creating a national standard for social care.

The work was commissioned by NHS Digital in a bid to roll out successful social care projects more widely across the country.

During the first stage of the programme, PRSB will be working with different local areas across England to determine which social care situations require national standards to support better care.

This could apply to when a person is transferred from a care home to hospital in an emergency, or other situations where a standard may not yet be in place.

Once the PRSB has determined if a standard is needed it will begin to develop a plan for creating national standards that will support better and more joined up health and care services.

The first stage of the programme will include webinars and online focus groups.

“We will be working with carers, care home workers, clinicians working in different settings, and people who use services,” a statement on PRSB’s website said.

“We’ll be gathering opinions through focus groups, webinars and surveys, all of which will be announced in the coming months.”

It comes after NHS Digital revealed it was supporting 16 adult social care organisations across the UK in delivering innovative sues of technology to provide better care.

The organisations received £4.5m between them to enable them to roll out their digital projects on a wider scale as part of NHS Digital’s Social Care Digital Pathfinders grant.

The successful Digital Pathfinders will commence a 13-month implementation phase with projects predominantly looking at standardising information and developing digital ways of sharing that information between multiple health and care organisations.

Managed by NHS Digital, the grant supports products and services that have already been piloted in small local areas – with the view to implementing them on a larger scale.