Patients

What is the Bolton Care Record?

The Bolton Care Record is a way of bringing together the relevant parts of your health and social care records, currently held by different care organisations who are responsible for looking after you. These records are currently held separately and aren’t available across different health and care settings when they are needed.

By sharing your information across services your GP practice or hospital team will be able to see the most up-to-date health information about you and be able to make better and quicker decisions about your care and treatment. This will be especially helpful when care is being provided by a range of professionals, is unplanned or in an emergency.

For example, this means that if you go into hospital in an emergency, the doctor treating you will know what medication your GP has prescribed for you. It also means that when you visit your GP, they will be able to see what care you have received in hospital. It will allow all healthcare professionals directly involved in your care to work with you to make safe and fully-informed decisions about your care.

As well as providing you with better, safer and quicker treatment, it also means you do not have to give the same information to lots of different people, which can sometimes happen at the moment.

Why do you need to share my information?

The NHS in England has been working with patients and clinicians to try and identify ways of ensuring that patients and clinicians are able to gain maximum benefit from their consultations. To enable this to happen, there is a target that the NHS should be paper free at the point of care by 2020.

To provide the best treatment, care and support to you as a patient or service user it is essential that health and social care professionals have access to the most up-to-date information. Information is already shared between health and social care organisations by phone and through paper records. The Bolton Care Record allows this sharing process to happen more efficiently, enabling better care for you.

What is meant by an Integrated Digital Care Record?

On a local level many Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) have started to integrate peoples’ health and social care records to improve the overall care they provide in their area and to ensure more joined up care is provided. This is referred to as an Integrated Digital Care Record.

Who will this affect?

Currently all residents in Bolton are part of the Bolton Care Record and this means that no matter where you receive your health and social care, you can be assured that the care professional will have the most up to date information relating to your treatment.

Who is responsible for the Bolton Care Record?

Bolton CCG will retain overall responsibility for ensuring that the governance structures are established and operate effectively. Governance structures for all aspects of the Bolton Care Record, including information governance, are being established and will include representatives from all of Bolton’s key partner organisations.

Who uses the Bolton Care Record?

The Bolton Care Record is used by health and care professionals within your local NHS and Social Care. Having access to this record allows health and care professionals to have a much wider view of information than they might otherwise have to hand, which in turn is beneficial to you when they provide your regular or emergency health care.

In situations where a clinician may not have any history of your previous treatments, for example in emergencies, access to information about allergies, diagnosis and medication can provide vital details that will help them give you the best care and advice possible.

Where does the Bolton Care Record get its information from?

The Bolton Care Record is an electronic record that brings together information from different parts of the NHS and Social Care in Bolton.

Who can amend or add information to my Bolton Care Record?

Your healthcare information will be updated locally by the hospital or your GP practice and these updates will be present in your care record the next time it is viewed.

If I receive treatment or care outside the Bolton area can health and social care professionals see my Bolton Care Record?

No. The Bolton Care Record is only available to the NHS and social care organisations in Bolton that have signed up to the system.

How do I know my records are kept secure?

Your information can only be accessed over a secure healthcare network and by those that are providing you with support.

By law, people working in or on behalf of the NHS or as part of NHS healthcare teams must respect your privacy and keep all information about you safe.

Staff access is limited to the patients that are registered with them via their login controls so that they cannot search for patients they are not treating.

Only qualified staff that are registered within their profession, such as doctors, nurses and social workers are allowed access to your whole record. Some administrative staff involved in your care will be able to see basic demographic details. This ensures that all staff are trained in data protection and patient confidentiality and are subject to disciplinary procedures if they break the code of conduct.

What if my GP doesn’t sign up to do this?

If your GP hasn’t signed up to sharing your records, and you wish to have your records shared, you should contact your practice in the first instance and express your wish to have your records shared.

How can I check the accuracy of my record or see what is held about me? Will I be able to access the information being held about me?

Under the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 you can request access to any information that an organisation holds about you, including electronic and paper records. If you wish to do this, please contact the relevant organisation for example: your registered GP practice or the hospital which the request relates to. You may also be able to access your own records electronically

What if I want some things changed?

If you find that any of the information held about you contains inaccuracies, please contact the relevant organisation as soon as possible, and ask for this to be corrected.

Is my data used in any other way?

The data that is held in the shared record is primarily for the purposes of direct health and care purposes. There is no intention that any of this data will be handed over to any third party or commercial organisations.

How do I know who has accessed my record?

The system provides a full audit trail of who has accessed the system. Each participating organisation will review their audit reports regularly to see who has looked at their patients’ records, and which records their staff are reviewing to ensure that all access is for legitimate reasons.

You can ask any of the organisations who are providing your care to find out who has accessed your Bolton Care Record and they can request an audit report to show all staff who have accessed your record, when and where. This may take a couple of days and could be sent to you or picked up at your next visit.

Staff can only access records for patients that are registered on their own clinical or social care system. They have no ability to search for any patients across the whole of Bolton.

Inappropriate access of patient data will be taken extremely seriously as it constitutes a breach of the General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018 and/or the Computer Misuse Act 1990. It will be reported as a serious incident and investigated appropriately. Disciplinary procedures should be enacted.

What do I do if I would like to make a complaint about the improper use of my record?

Please contact the care provider directly to register a complaint about alleged improper use by their staff.

Who ensures my data is managed and kept securely within Data Protection Guidelines?

The Bolton Care Record has an Information Governance Group (IG) who are responsible for overseeing the security and data protection.

Information Governance is another term for Data Protection.

The membership of this group are the IG leads from each participating partner organisation. The group are responsible for overseeing who can input data into the Bolton Care Record, who is allowed to view it and the controls that are put in place around this.