Better Informed means Better Care for Dorset residents – Further pathways added to the Dorset Care Record

People living in Dorset can look forward to enhanced coordinated care as further records are joined up within the Dorset Care Record (DCR).

The next tranche of health and social care records are coming on stream this week, which will mean that a quarter of the proposed data feeds within the Dorset Care Record have been successfully integrated.

For the first time, allergy information from Dorset County Hospital will come on stream, which, for example, will be useful for hospital teams who will be able to prescribe more safely.

It will also be useful for hospital pharmacy prescription teams who will be able to check what has been prescribed with regards to medicine reconciliation.

Emergency Department encounter information from Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch (RBCH) and Poole Hospitals is also going live. It means that ED encounter information will be available county wide.

Peter Gill, DCR chairman and Director of Informatics at RBCH and Poole Hospital, said the additional records would help health and social care professionals make clearer decisions about people’s care.

“It will mean that practitioners will be able to have easier access to results and reports across the county.”

At present, nearly 900 trained health and social care professionals are using the DCR across the partnership, which includes the county’s three acute hospitals, Dorset HealthCare, Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group and the two local authorities. All the county’s GP practices are now either connected or in the process of being connected to the DCR.

The ambition is to grow to around 7,000 as the phased rollout progresses. Around 2,000 health and social care records are accessed every month.