Shared Care Record

The Shared Care Record is a way of bringing together all your separate records from the different organisations involved in your health and care. It’s confidential and different to anything you might have heard of before.

It will let health and social work professionals see relevant information about the care and treatment you’ve had across all services.

We know you only want to tell your story once when receiving care from any health or social care organisation across Birmingham and Solihull. That’s why we’ve developed the Shared Care Record.

The first phase of the Shared Care Record will allow health and social work professionals to view appropriate information contained in:

• your GP practice medical record
• information from secondary care, including hospitals, mental health and community services
• radiology and pathology results
• maternity records.

Being able to see this information will help them give you the best care as quickly as possible without having to make phone calls or wait for other organisations to forward details on.

Some of their administrative and secretarial staff will also be able to see information so they can support the professionals. An example would be to send you an appointment letter.

All staff must follow the law on keeping your information confidential. Each time they look at your records this will be recorded to make sure they’re only looking at the right information, for the right reasons.

We’ll bring together information from GPs and allow it to be seen by health professionals in hospitals, including Emergency Departments. And we’ll add information from community and social care, ambulance and NHS 111 services.

We’ll carry on developing the Shared Care Record, allowing clinicians and social work professionals across more health and social care settings to see information to support your care. We’ll also help services understand and find the best ways to meet people’s care needs.

There are strict rules around how we use your information. As part of this work, we’ll make sure it’s managed and viewed appropriately and in line with all legal requirements, including UK data protection legislation (DPA 2018 and superseding legislation). Official inspections, or audits, will check this is the case.

The organisations currently taking part in the programme are local health and care services:

• GP practices in Birmingham and Solihull
• Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
• University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
• Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (including Forward Thinking Birmingham)
• Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
• The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Birmingham City Council
• Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
• Birmingham Children’s Trust
• West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust

Health and care organisations in the neighbouring areas of Coventry and Warwickshire, and Herefordshire and Worcestershire will also be able to view your information for the purpose of giving you direct care should it be necessary.

You don’t need to do anything. For anyone who is registered with a GP in Birmingham (excluding west Birmingham) and Solihull, Coventry and Warwickshire, or Herefordshire and Worcestershire, the change is taking place automatically as we now switch on the Shared Care Record across the organisations taking part in the programme. We’ll update the list of organisations over time to reflect any changes that may take place.

As we now have the capability to include the details of people under the age of 18, their records will also be available for health and social work professionals to view through the Shared Care Record.

Your GP practice can choose not to take part in the Shared Care Record programme. If that is the case for your practice, the information in your GP records will not be available for other health and social work professionals to view through the Shared Care Record. Please check with your GP practice if you would like to know whether it is taking part.

The benefits to you include:

• not having to repeat your details every time you need care
• better and, potentially, faster treatment as the professionals caring for you will be able to quickly see your records
• not having to explain your social care support to health professionals
• clinicians being able to see what medications you’re taking, what you’ve taken in the past, and if you have any allergies – making your treatment safer
• more effective treatment should you need care for COVID-19, thanks to the fast availability of information about any pre-existing conditions you might have and your medications.

Yes, you have the right to object at any time if you are 16 years of age or older.

From the age of 13 to 16, we will consider your right to object if your form has been signed on your behalf by someone with parental responsibility.

If it has not, we will ask a recognised health or social work professional if they consider you to be competent to make such a decision.

If you are under the age of 13, we will only consider your right to object if your form has been signed on your behalf by someone with parental responsibility.

We don’t recommend objecting, as information that could be vital when you need health or social care support – for instance, during a visit to a hospital Emergency Department – might not be immediately to hand as a result.

Objecting will mean the services giving you care will be unable to view your records from other services through the Shared Care Record.

However, the decision is entirely yours. If you do want to object, you can do so by visiting our Right to Object page.

Our leaflet is available to download as an easy read document, and in a number of different languages:

• Arabic
• Bengali
• Chinese
• English
• Farsi
• Polish
• Romanian
• Somali
• Tigrinya
• Urdu

If you’re unsure about anything, or have any questions we haven’t answered in our FAQs, please email us or call us on 0345 6461163.

You can also contact us if you need this information in an alternative format, for example, braille or audio.

If you’d like to see the results of our survey, you’ll find them in our engagement campaign report. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond and share their views.

With technology now central to many improvements to health and social care, we’re working on a number of regional projects to develop and put in place systems to make sure we can share people’s care information safely and effectively. These are:

• Birmingham and Solihull Shared Care Record: This will allow viewing of a person’s health and care records by the professionals involved in their care, whether that’s in community, primary, mental health, acute or social care services.
• West Midlands Cancer Alliance eMDT Project: This will enable healthcare professionals to share information so they can work together effectively and make the best decisions for patients receiving cancer treatment.
• HDR UK PIONEER Health Data Research Hub: This will bring together information about the hospital stays of seriously ill patients. It aims to carry out research into how they use services such as ambulances and hospitals, helping those services to plan and improve, and develop new treatment options. The HDR UK Pioneer Research Hub is an ethically approved health data research database.

These projects all have the same ambition – to break down traditional barriers to sharing information. In this way, we can learn from each other and make better decisions for all people who use health and care services.