Yorkshire Ambulance Service sharing 999 patient records through the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust (YAS) is now sharing its electronic care records of all emergency patient encounters, via the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR), with health and social care professionals in the region to benefit individuals’ ongoing clinical care.

Since its launch in mid-October 2023 up until the end of January 2024, over 305,000 records have been shared and this has helped other health and social care partners to be as well informed as possible about someone’s condition and treatment.

YAS is responsible for conveying over 400,000 patients every year into 21 emergency departments across the Yorkshire and Humber region and thousands more patients are helped via telephone advice.

Records of these encounters, from 18 October 2023 onwards, are available to view via the YHCR Interweave Portal for all participating health and social care organisations. The portal is a web app which presents a holistic view of the patient for providing ongoing care and supports informed decision-making.

Benefits from this development include:

• Care providers gain a fuller knowledge of patients' use of emergency services, with access to the clinical record and data from those encounters.
• Improvements to patient experience, reducing the need for them to repeat information already recorded.
• Improved care options’ evaluation through access to the emergency care patient record.
• Identification of patients who frequently access services, and information on recent patient observations and treatments to improve continuity of care.

Dr Steven Dykes, YAS Deputy Medical Director, commented on the importance of this project: “Ambulance clinician access to rich patient information and wider healthcare records is key to providing individualised patient care in the right place, at the right time. We are prioritising data sharing with both our own clinicians and health and social care partners to ensure that patients experience joined-up, safer care through the urgent and emergency care pathway.”

Lee Rickles, Programme Director for YHCR, affirmed: “It is great to see Yorkshire Ambulance Service broaden their data provision to share information on all patient encounters. As a regional healthcare provider this information has a wide reach.”