Graphnet breaks through 20 million patient record barrier

Latest development: go-live across Surrey

Graphnet’s shared records now hold records for over 20 million people across England, with 37% of Clinical Commissioning Groups using the company’s software for shared records and/or population health management.  This milestone follows the deployment of the Surrey Care Record across the county’s health and care system.

Shared care records are recognised as key to supporting joined up care. NHS chief executive Simon Stevens and chief operating officer Amanda Pritchard have asked all NHS senior managers, including CEOs ICSs, STPs and local systems, to develop as a priority a full shared care record to allow the safe flow of patient data between care settings and the aggregation of data for population health^[1].  

Graphnet’s CareCentric record already assists care for around 20,000 patient encounters a day, ensuring that health and social professionals have access to up-to-date information, and this number is rising rapidly.

The CareCentric shared record and population health management system assembles real-time and near real-time information from across multiple sources – including, OOHs, 111, ambulance, GP, acute, community, mental health, social care services and care homes. This means that information flows across settings, so care providers are able to collaborate more effectively and respond to patients at the point of care with a more complete understanding of their needs.  

The system also includes a complete risk stratification and planning service that allows care economies to plan activities and interventions to improve the health of their populations.  This has proved particularly important as the NHS comes to terms with the aftermath of the initial phase of Covid-19 and is being used as a central planning tool for this winter when services are gearing up to face combined winter flu and Covid-19 pressures. 

Brian Waters, chief executive of Graphnet, said the drive towards shared care records was really picking up pace as organisations within care economies collaborate ever more closely. 

“We are seeing ever-increasing focus on the integration of services, on streamlined commissioning, and on the NHS and local authorities working together to join up pathways – all this has put the safe sharing of information between care settings centre stage”, he said.   “The Covid-19 epidemic has only served to heighten awareness of the very real benefits of both record sharing and analytics. 

“Over the years we have connected literally thousands of systems and that experience is allowing us to deploy these systems more and more quickly.  We have a number of current projects with delivery times of just months.”

Recent deployments accelerated in order to respond to Covid-19 challenges include the Surrey Care Record and the Greater Manchester Care Record.  Others are underway.

The operational benefits of shared record systems include large reductions in cross-provider requests for patient information, closer collaboration between NHS and local authorities on areas such as discharge planning, real-time flags about a patient’s Covid-19 status, and quality of care enhancements leading to reduced ED attendances, emergency admissions and length of stay. 

CareCentric’s population health management functionality means systems can take this information, bring in other relevant data – wider determinants, Acorn, SUS, ethnicity, deprivation and so on, anonymise it, and provide the tools needed for local analysis and planning. 

It provides commissioners with the information they need to take action on inequalities, to identify areas or cohorts of patients requiring focus, to ensure services are restored inclusively, and to target prevention programmes. 

^[1] Letter to NHS: Third Phase of NHS Response to Covid-19.  31 July 2020