The London-wide service by Coordinate My Care powered by InterSystems HealthShare® has been highly commended in the medical software, systems and technology category at this year’s HSJ Partnership Awards, which celebrated successes in the NHS.
The Coordinate My Care (CMC) service gives thousands of patients greater power to let healthcare professionals know about their urgent and end-of-life care wishes. The program enables users to create an online urgent care plan which enables patients to specify the treatment they want, where, and when they want it. General Practitioners (GPs), hospitals, ambulance crews, 111 providers, care homes, hospices and out-of-hours services can access this information, alongside essential clinical details, so they can provide care in line with patients’ requests.
The scalable service is helping to cut inappropriate hospital admissions and reduce the stress on patients and their loved ones – providing simple, yet secure access to vital information to authorised care providers.
Now delivering an annual saving of over £16.8m, CMC is transforming how those with urgent care plan requirements are looked after. Across the country, 47% of deaths occur in hospital [1]; yet 70 percent of people say they would prefer to die at home [2]. For patients with a CMC plan, only 19 percent die in hospital. An independent economic study found that the mean number of A&E attendances was 1.2 for CMC patients, and 1.5-1.9 for non-CMC patients in the 6 months prior to death.
Professor Julia Riley, CMC clinical lead, said: “With well over 65,000 CMC plans in place, we are helping NHS and care providers deliver the care patients want to receive at a crucial point of their life. Thanks to the clinical team behind the service, and the technology underpinning it, we are seeing more patients having their wishes respected.”
The system is built on InterSystems’ suite of connected health solutions, HealthShare, which is recognised as one of the most advanced and interoperable platforms in use across global health and care systems. HealthShare enables organisations to pull together social and clinical care information into a unified patient record.
David Hancock, InterSystems client engagement director, said: “The Coordinate My Care system makes it simple to record and share in real-time medical details, treatment wishes and advance care plans for thousands of patients across London. It is also backed up with extensive security and access controls, so patients have control over which professionals can see their information. With the support of CMC and London’s health community, we have come together to develop a digitally-enabled clinical service that is making a lasting difference to people across the capital, and which could help the wider NHS as well.”
Judges for the HSJ Partnership Awards were looking for innovations in digital health technology that could demonstrate results for patients, staff and NHS organisations.