The Devon and Cornwall Care Record

What is the Devon and Cornwall Care Record?

The different NHS organisations which provide care to you have, until now, each used their own clinical records with information on your visits to them. For example, if you had an appointment with a consultant in hospital and the consultant wanted you to have some tests or scans done, the hospital would keep a record of the results of these tests. Information like this was not automatically shared with other organisations such as your GP surgery, so if we needed a copy of these results to help in your care, as a surgery we would need to ask the hospital for a copy and wait for this to be sent to us.

The new shared care record system for Devon and Cornwall has now been introduced to improve the way you receive care.

The Devon and Cornwall Care Record is a secure computer system that brings together information about your health and care from multiple healthcare organisations across Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and presents it as a single record. This means that if you need your GP to see a letter from the hospital, or important test results that the hospital asked you to have, your GP can access the shared care record system and view your results straight away.

This helps with your care at other organisations too; having a more complete view of your medical history helps healthcare professionals identify problems more effectively, and make quicker diagnoses. For instance, they can see which allergies you suffer from, and any treatment and medication you have received at your GP surgery.

As well as making treatment safer, the care you receive will be more co-ordinated, giving you a smoother journey through the health system.

It also saves healthcare staff the time it takes to find information, and spares you the frustration of having to answer the same questions or undergo duplicate or unnecessary tests.

How do we keep your data safe?

Keeping your personal data safe is a key aspect of the Devon and Cornwall Care Record, and we take every required measure to keep this information secure and confidential.  Shared care records are subject to UK data protection legislation. They can only be viewed by people involved in your care, and they work under strict codes of conduct.

However, if you would prefer that your information is not shared in this way, you can tell the shared care organisation by filling out the objection form on the Devon and Cornwall Care Record website (please click here to go straight to the form).

(A DPIA is a tool used by an organisation, or organisations, when planning a project that uses its service users’ data in a way that is different to the way the data has been used in the past. It helps the organisation to design a system of managing this data which comes with minimal risk to the data itself, and to help the organisation make sure they are acting within data protection regulations and following the law. For more information about DPIAs, and how to view the surgery’s DPIAs, please click here.)

Where can you find out more?

For more information, please visit the Devon and Cornwall Care Record website: https://devonandcornwallcarerecord.nhs.uk