Too often, patients need to repeat their medical history when in contact with different healthcare providers. Consequently, clinicians need more time to make decisions than necessary because they can’t access patient data. London managed to digitize urgent care plans.

Even though we live in a digital age, where we can seamlessly communicate and share information worldwide, data sharing in healthcare is still a common frustration for patients and clinicians.

This episode presents the Urgent Care Plan Programme, aiming at giving clinicians easy access to patients’ desires about their care, as defined in their care plan. Patients can fill out an urgent care plan at various points in their patient journey. The problem so far has been that accessing these plans by different providers was often difficult. Now the situation is improved with an introduction of a regional platform that stores urgent care plans and enables different care teams to access them when needed.

Urgent Care Plan Programme is a part of OneLondon Portfolio. OneLondon is a project that supports a vision of joined-up health and care. It is a pan-London collaboration between leaders from the 5 Integrated Care Systems in the capital. 

London’s healthcare system is complex. It covers a population of 10 million people and is connecting 35 NHS Trusts and 1385 GP practices.

As part of the OneLondon portfolio, the Urgent Care Plan Programme led the design and implementation of a new digital care planning solution in 2021. This solution enables Londoners to have their care and support wishes digitally shared with healthcare professionals across the capital. By connecting all care levels, clinicians can now easily access urgent care plans to guide them in the care they provide to patients based on patients' individual preferences.

You can hear more about what are urgent care plans, why they matter and more from Dr Phil Koczan, GP in North East London and the Chief Clinical Safety Officer for London, Dr Katherine Buxton, Consultant in Palliative Care Medicine for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Clinical Director, Palliative and End of Life Care Strategic Clinical Network for London. They explained what the joint urgent care plan means for patients and healthcare providers in London. 

The topic of this episode is supported by Better - a provider of an open data digital health platform, electronic prescribing and medication administration solution, and low code tools that help you rapidly build applications that suit your needs. The company focuses on simplifying the work of health and care teams, advocates for data for life, and strives for all health data to be vendor-neutral and easily accessible.