Clinical service for urgent and end of life care sets up website for patients to provide their instructions to emergency and care staff
A specialist NHS clinical service for London has set up a website to enable patients to tell emergency services and care providers about their wishes for urgent and end of life care.
Coordinate My Care (CMC) has launched the myCMC website for patients to set out a care plan, working with their clinician, so that staff in hospitals, care homes, hospices, out of hours services and ambulance crews will know their diagnosis and how they wish to be treated.
They can specify the treatment they want, where and when they want it, should their condition deteriorate, provide their key contact information and document if they would like their organs donated.
Once a patient initiates a plan the relevant clinicians are notified and the patient has a consultation with a doctor or nurse to complete the information. When it is approved by a doctor it becomes accessible to urgent care providers, and when they are given a patient’s identity their systems should flag up whether the person has a plan.
CMC built the portal on InterSystems’ HealthShare platform, and designed it to be intuitive, although it is providing online training for anyone who needs it. It plans to gather feedback on patients’ experiences through the year.
Big impact
Professor Julia Riley, clinical lead at CMC, said: “CMC has already had a big impact for many patients, but there are many more who are still inappropriately sent to hospital when they do not want to be there, causing distress for patients and pressure on the system. MyCMC is accessible online and will allow many more patients, families and carers, to set up plans that can make a huge difference to their experience.”
CMC is a pan-London clinical service created by NHS doctors and nurses. More than 46,000 CMC plans have so far been created for patients, and the organisation expects the launch of myCMC to lead to a significant increase in the number.
