Many, if not all of you, will now be using the EMIS template called EPaCCS (Electronic Palliative Care Coordination System) to code important information regarding your patients nearing end of life and to enable coordination and seamless care for these patients. The Cheshire Care Record team has been working with Graphnet, who provide the Cheshire Care Record (CCR), and EMIS to enable the upload of this information to the Cheshire Care Record, thus enabling wider sharing of this information. This will make a huge impact on care for these patients, who often need care out of hours and by different professionals who may not have met the patient before.
This information will be available to Social Workers and to our hospitals when they are also caring for your patients. The information in CCR for the patient care plan, will help them play their part in their care. Colleagues at the Christie and Clatterbridge Cancer Centre can also use the care plan as part of their care.
We are now ready to roll this out to all practices in Cheshire. We are therefore asking two things of yourselves as a practice:
1. Please switch on the information sharing DATA SHARING AGREEMENT for end of life when requested by the team and provide any information they may need to ensure the information is flowing correctly ( a guide to help you with this can be found here). Please would you provide 2 of your patients NHS numbers who have End of Life data codes, so that we can test the upload of your Practice EPaCCs information into CCR (please email Mark Elson on email address given below)
2. Please ask your clinical teams to use the EPaCCS template within EMIS to code information regarding their patients nearing end of life. This will ensure they are using the correct codes to be uploaded to the CCR, and will ensure that as many of these patients as possible can benefit from this information sharing.
If you have any questions regarding the Cheshire Care Record please contact Mark Elson, Clinical Systems Manager (CCR,)Countess of Chester Foundation Hospital, mark.elson@nhs.net, Contact: 01244 363533
If you have any questions regarding EPaCCS and how to use this in an effective way within your practice please contact the Cheshire end of life Partnership on 01270 758120 and ask for Dr Sinead Clarke or Annamarie Ratcliffe. There is also additional information and resources regarding EPaCCS and other end of life issues on Cheshire EPaige.