Dorset Care Record

The Dorset Care Record (DCR) brings all your health details together so health and social care staff can give you the best possible care. It is a new, confidential computer record that will join up different information to create a more comprehensive and up-to-date record about you. Over time, this will help improve the care you receive.

Sharing you record will ensure that:

  • you receive more co-ordinated and safer care
  • clear decisions can be made about your care
  • you don’t have to repeat your details to lots of different professionals
  • we hold accurate contact details about you
  • we have better understanding of your situation.

The DCR is a partnership supported by NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group, Dorset County Hospital, University Hospitals Dorset, Dorset HealthCare, Dorset County Council, Borough of Poole and Bournemouth Borough Councils and the South Western Ambulance Service Trust.

You can find out more at the DCR website.

If you have any questions about the DCR, you can contact the team at dorsetcarerecord@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk or call the helpline on 0345 200 0026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Information in the DCR

Details in the record will include; dates and outcomes of hospital visits, upcoming appointments, referrals, prescribed medications, allergies, investigations for example blood tests – diagnoses, support plan, planned review date and type of package and care plans.


Viewing the DCR

Your health and social care records will still be confidential. They will only be looked at by professionals who are directly involved in your care or those supporting the delivery of that care (e.g. practice and hospital administrative staff). Your information isn’t shared with anyone who doesn’t need it to provide treatment, care and support to you. Your details will be kept safe and won’t be made public; passed on to a third party who is not directly involved in your care, used for advertising or sold.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, you can request access to all information that organisations hold about you, including copies of paper, electronic and combined health records. If you wish to see the health or care information held about you, please contact the organisation providing your care or the DCR Privacy Officer.

In addition to this, under the GDPR and DPA 2018 you can request data to be moved or copies sent to another organisation.

You will in time be able to update your own DCR. The Government is keen for people to be able to access their digital records and we are looking to launch this in 2019.


Adding to the DCR

Selected information is provided by NHS systems such as hospitals and GPs. This information is regularly updated with encounter information and changes to demographics, such as your address. No new information that doesn’t exist on the source systems will currently be created in the DCR. In due course, social care information from local authority and the South West Ambulance Service Trust will be added on a read-only basis. You will be able to ask for incorrect data to be updated. This will be undertaken by responsible owners to ensure that updates are relevant and correct.


DCR Confidentiality

We and our partners take data security extremely seriously. As part of our cyber security approach, all access to information is via a highly secure access portal limited to approved NHS and Local Authority health and social care professionals.

The DCR will only be used to improve the care and support we provide to you. It will never be sold to third parties like insurance companies or drug firms.

By law, everyone working in, or behalf of, the NHS and adult social care must follow strict information governance rules designed to respect patient privacy and keep all information about you safe. The DCR will keep a record of everyone who has accessed a record, the time and date when they have accessed it and the information they were viewing. The laws on data protection are clear and we take them very seriously.

The DCR Partnership has signed up to the Dorset Information Sharing Charter (DiSC) which governs how we share personal data with each other in line with legislation


Treatment outside of Dorset

The Dorset Care Record only includes information from local health and care organisations and GP practices. Currently, no other organisations outside the county will be able to access or update your record.

As some residents are sent to hospitals outside of Dorset, we are working with Salisbury, Yeovil and Southampton hospitals to ensure that in time they should be able to add information to your care record.


Carer Consent

Your carer or family member can give permission for a health and social care professional to access your information if you do not have the capacity to make the decision for yourself in line with the law. They will need to prove that they have legal responsibility to make the decision on behalf of another.


Dorset Care Record and Summary Care Record

The Dorset Care Record provides a more detailed view of your health, care and treatment from your local NHS and social care organisations.

The Summary Care Record is used nationally and is only a snapshot of your GP record.

If you have opted out of the Summary Care Record you still need to opt out of the Dorset Care Record as well.


Dorset Care Record joins up records

Individual organisations currently keep a record about you. For example, everyone who is registered at a GP surgery will have a record kept at that practice. If you attend a hospital, they will create their own record about you and the same will happen for adult and children’s services within local authorities. The DCR brings all these electronic records together in one place for a fuller picture about your health.


Dorset Care Record and Security

The DCR solution is provided by global healthcare company Orion Health, which also looks after a number of other care records across the UK. Orion Health access is governed by an Information Security Management System that has been independently certified as compliant with the requirements of ISO/IEC 27001:2013 for the provision of Health Integration Software.

All access to information is via a secure access portal limited to approved NHS and Local Authority health and social care professionals, in addition all data is encrypted from database to browser. System security testing is regularly undertaken to make sure there is no unauthorised access to patient records. Your Dorset Care Record will not be stored in a third country, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office.


Promoting the Dorset Care Record

We have a range of easy read and generic consent leaflets which are available in doctor’s surgeries, acute and community hospitals, libraries and council buildings. These are also available, on request, in a range of foreign languages. This is backed up with online information on our dedicated Dorset Care Record website, which provides links to our social media feeds and latest news.

We have and will continue to promote the Dorset Care Record at roadshows, events, open days and community meetings as we roll out the Dorset Care Record, which includes the citizen portal.

We have organised a leaflet drop to every household in Dorset commencing January 2019 alongside a radio advertising campaign.

Your health records