Kent and Medway ICS goes live and joins growing number of CareCentric users

Kent and Medway has gone live with the CareCentric shared care record across the region’s integrated care system. This is the third system to go live with CareCentric over the last year following rapid deployments at Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, and Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.  With this latest go-live, Graphnet has now deployed to integrated care systems covering well over 20m residents.

Graphnet has specialised in shared care records for over 20 years and has been increasing numbers steadily over that period.  The recent shared record initiative from NHSX has increased the pace, both in terms of new records deployed and in adding providers to records already installed.  Graphnet records include Greater Manchester, Frimley, Berkshire West, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, St Helens, Nottinghamshire and Cheshire.

The Kent and Medway Care Record (KMCR) was commissioned by a collaborative comprising the NHS Kent and Medway CCG, Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, Kent County Council and Medway Council to provide health and care professionals with secure access to the most important and recent health and care information about a citizen in one central place from multiple health and care organisations.

The system brings together information from a growing number of settings, including four acute hospital trusts, three community-based providers, two mental health services, South East Ambulance Service and 198 GP practices, in addition to Kent County Council and Medway Council’s children’s and adults’ social care teams.

With a wider range of data available at the point of care, the information shared across the organisations will drive better outcomes and experiences for the county’s 1.9 million citizens. This timely flow of information will allow health and care professionals to make better informed decisions resulting in safer, better quality care, giving professionals time back to deliver more care, and will enable the delivery of more joined up and proactive care.

In response to the pandemic, the KMCR project has also included the mobilisation and deployment of a dedicated Covid-19 summary to flag a patient’s infection and vaccine status, if applicable.  Covid-19 dashboards are being developed to provide comprehensive views of infections, hospitalisations, deaths and vaccinations.  The dashboards give greater intelligence about the impact of the virus to support decision-making and ensure residents across the region receive the most effective and integrated care.   

In the future, people living in Kent and Medway will be able to access key information from their own care records through the KMCR patient portal, giving them the ability to proactively manage and engage with various elements of their care. The planning for this phase of the project is underway, along with the implementation of population health management tools.

Dr Navin Kumta, clinical chair of Kent and Medway CCG said, “The KMCR is delivering a significant transformational change in Kent and Medway. As well as helping us improve front line care, the KMCR underpins our drive to integrate care across the system.”

Brian Waters, chief executive at Graphnet, commented: “I’m delighted we could assist Kent and Medway with this major programme to join up services across the region’s care community.  We are now looking forward to the second phase, bringing the care community the benefits of population health management and giving citizens across Kent and Medway access to their own records.”