Wigan Council – health and social care footprint

Share to Care

Briefly describe the initiative/ project/ service

This is a project to deliver a shared view of patient GP and other medical data, to stakeholders/partners, at key locations across Wigan. This uses the Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) tool to present the data. The solution presents data currently at locations like Walk In Centre/ Pharmacy. The benefits include a solution which enables information such as accurate medication information to be accessed, which can prevent delays in discharge whilst this is being confirmed, as the patient can safely be prescribed any additional medication once this information is confirmed. The tool is used by a range of practitioners and is particularly valuable out of hours when GP surgeries are closed. It also means that staff are not “blocking” GP telephone lines, whilst phoning to confirm this data.

Why do you think it should win this award?

Because this has been working so well – it addresses the issue of gaining patient consent to sharing the data, by seeking this at the point at which the information is required. The patient consents to access to their data and then the data is sourced from the back office system and used to inform care. The data is not held anywhere and there are no “data ownership” issues in terms of the shared record. The multi agency team have successfully implemented the IG to enable this to happen. overcoming barriers to this and developing innovative solutions in this area. Signed off by the Chief Executives from all five key healthcare partners, and local GPs, the creation of
the holistic Information Assurance Contract and Information Sharing Agreement are regarded as a
great success of Wigan’s economy-based approach, facilitating the use of information for care
purposes, with patient consent at the point of care.
The solution is now being further rolled out to enable for example, the sharing of End of Life plans with key stakeholders so that we can ensure that people’s wishes are adhered to and they can be respected.

What are the key achievements?

By May 2016, shared access to the detailed care record had been deployed to 18 separate services,
including:
 The Wigan GP Alliance (consisting of 65 GP practices)
 Pharmacy teams (community and hospital-based)
 A range of hospital-based services – including Emergency Care, Palliative Care, Ward Management, Anaesthetics, and Rapid Mental Health Assessment (RAID)
 A range of community health services – including District Nurses, Community Falls, Podiatry,
and Musculoskeletal Clinical Assessment and Treatment Service
 Wigan’s Integrated Safeguarding and Public Protection (ISAPP) team
 A number of local Hospices
Access to the detailed care record is planned for further services, once locations are approved and technically configured.
Demand for access to the detailed care record has been clearly demonstrated already, with records of over 4000 accesses to the information being shared, averaging around 600 accesses per month.

In addition to the SharetoCare programme outlined above, ‘SharetoCare’ is also a used as a shared brand for communication with local people and practitioners about information sharing. Used by all of Wigan’s health and social care providers the materials developed to date particularly focus