CfH to examine health and social care links

Plans to examine how links between electronic health and social care records could be made to work are to be considered by Connecting for Health this month, according to Community Care magazine.

CfH’s national board is due to consider proposals on how a sub-group of the Care Record Development Board may look at linking records from the two organisations.

The sub-group, set up earlier this year by the CRDB, has already begun to look at the issues around sharing health and social care information.

A spokesperson for NHS Connecting for Health told EHI Primary Care that the CRDB action team was examining the ethical and practical issues around sharing health and social care information.

He added: “Particular work is being done on the Single Assessment Process. At the moment no firm proposals have been accepted.”

Dr Richard Fitton, a GP in Derbyshire and former member of the CRDB, said interoperability with social care was a big work thread for the CRDB this year. He said his understanding was that there were different regulations surrounding the use of information supplied to social services and that supplied to the NHS which would affect how records could be linked.

He told EHI Primary Care: “I am surmising that, rather than their being direct links, what is probably going to happen is that you and I as service users would be able to agree to social services looking at our medical records if we wanted them to.”

More emphasis on closer electronic links between health and social services is expected to emerge from the forthcoming white paper on out-of-hospital care.

However a survey by Community Care conducted at the end of October also revealed that, like the NHS, social services departments are struggling to meet government targets on electronic records. The survey found that more than 75% of social care professionals believe their departments will not be ready to switch to electronic records at the end of the year as planned.

The survey also found that three-quarters of social care staff are opposed to new draft government guidance which proposes to allow health professionals more discretion than other children’s services staff about when to share information.

The guidance proposes that health professionals lower the threshold at which they seek information from other agencies over concerns about children and young people but suggests a two tier approach which would mean health professionals need only consider sharing substantive information if they are satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that a child is being harmed.

Social service representatives have argued that there is no justification for health professionals to have separate levels of responsibility.

A spokesman for the BMA told EHI Primary Care that the association was still preparing its response to the consultation document.

Links

Health professionals urged to share child information