Dear Practice Manager,
We would like to take this opportunity to make you aware of some exciting developments on three major interoperability projects in Nottinghamshire that will be of great benefit to both staff and patients.
This will be the first in a series of email communications supported by CCGs during the lifecycle of the projects some of which will include supporting materials which we hope will answer any questions you may have.
These projects are:
Project 1: Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG)
What is it? MIG is a record viewer that allows clinical staff outside of a patient’s GP practice to view key items from the GP clinical records (SystmOne or EMISWeb). Records are viewed in ‘real-time’ and are ‘view only’. No data is stored at the viewing site. Each clinician viewing the record has to indicate they have gained a patient’s consent or give a reason as to why this has not been obtained. Each practice can view an audit log of all accesses to their patient’s records.
What data does it include? The latest version of MIG includes: Summary, Problems, Diagnosis, Medications, Procedures, Investigations, Examinations, Events, Patient details, Risks/Warnings and Supportive care (end-of-life data). For most of this information only Read code terms can be seen. The exceptions are the ePaCCs entries for end-of-life which also include any free text you have entered against those codes.
Who uses it? Cliniciansin Nottinghamshire including NUH, SHFT, EMAS, NEMS, 111.
When does it go live? MIG has been live since mid-2015 and is routinely accessed.
What are the benefits? The benefit to practices will be urgent and emergency care staff no longer having to contact GP practices to obtain patients records (which cannot be done when they are closed during evenings, weekends or bank holidays) resulting in less phone calls and time saving to practice staff. It enables clinical staff in these settings be able to make more informed clinical decisions for your patients, avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions and medical tests for your patients and improving the overall experience for your patients.
Project 2: GP Repository for Clinical Care (GPRCC)
What is it? GPRCC allows GP practices and local care teams to regularly review key cohorts of patients who have COPD, Heart failure, Stroke, dementia, are on your end-of-life registers or on your 2% admission avoidance lists. GPRCC is implemented in eHealthscope.
What data does it include? Data to support these views comes from GPs (EMISWeb, SystmOne), from Community systems (CHP, CityCare, PICS), from secondary care (NUH and SHFT) and is presented in a simple integrated view, one row per patient. Social care data will soon be added to the mix.
Who uses it? Key users are likely to be your Local Care Team or Care Delivery Group in preparing MDT meetings. Practices themselves will also find the data useful for adding patients to their 2% lists, spotting potential gaps in care such as patients with severe COPD who are not under the community COPD team.
A spin-off is that the registers and logs that you are currently using now have patient names, making clinical audit much easier.
When does it go live? GPRCC goes live for your practice when you register. As of mid-August 67 practices are live.
What are the benefits? The benefit to practices is an improved summarised view for key cohorts of patients which will improves planning for practice MDT meetings.
Practices can see gaps in patient care on the new centralised ‘workflow’ page without having to browse through a mountain of data first.
Clinical audit is improved which can improve your delivery of healthcare, demonstrate the effectiveness of your practice to CQC and show your individual performance for appraisals.
Project 3: The Community Portal ( Care Centric)
What is it? The Community Portal programme was initiated early 2016 and uses CareCentric. It enables feeds from various care settings to be brought together in a single record view.
What data does it include? GPs, community and secondary care data. Limited data only available in October 2016. Eventually planned to contain data from other sources such as social care, 111, EMAS.
Who uses it? From a GP perspective it will eventually replace NOTIS and GP Access and consolidate data from multiple sources. Other community and secondary care clinicians will also use the portal.
When does it go live? This functionality will be made available in phases with GP information (Read coded terms only) and some hospital letters available by the end of October 2016. At this stage one pilot practice from each CCG will have access alongside all of Rushcliffe practices. The major users initially will be NUH.
What are the benefits? The benefits are the same as the MIG above, but there will be much more detail in the information received from more sources
Supporting Documentation
A significant amount of engagement has taken place involving CCG leads and clinical staff to produce supporting documentation for GP practices. This documentation includes:
- Project Key messages – a description of the three projects above detailing what they are, what they will deliver and the anticipated benefits to both staff and patients
- Communications products plan – a description of the standard products we will use to support projects
- Nottinghamshire Sharing Policy – the Records Information Group (RIG) approved sharing policy for Nottinghamshire
- You can find the latest versions of the above documents by visiting
Practice Sharing Notice
A clinically led sharing guide for GP practices (produced by Dr. Mike O’Neil) detailing key areas to help practices answer patient questions. We suggest adding this document to your practice website to replace all previous data sharing notices.
If you have any questions regarding the above please do not hesitate to contact your local CCG