Care Planning

Policy

Care plans help us maintain oversight of any healthcare needs not provided by the practice, and support continuity of care when a patient is transferred to or from different services.

A care plan is a living record, stored securely, that we review and update as needed. It can incorporate input from other clinicians, the patient's other healthcare providers, and their wider support team, family/whānau, and carers.

Issues that arise concerning care plans are discussed at team meetings, to support learning.

What platform do you use to share clinical information with other providers? E.g. HealthOne (South Island only). If you don't have access to HealthOne, how do you share information?

The practice uses the HealthOne shared care platform to record the care plan and ongoing health information, goals, tasks, and other related data.

Developing and sharing a care plan

Patients who would benefit from developing a shared care plan are identified by the clinician during consultations. This may include patients with complex/long-term health needs.

The patient's clinician is their principal coordinator of care and is the primary point of contact within the practice about the patient's care plan. If the coordinator is unavailable, responsibility is delegated to another appropriate clinician with the patient's consent.

Consider discussing with the patient

• Why their condition means they might benefit from a care plan.
• What is most important to them: consider problems, goals, and actions.
• How their health information may be shared with other healthcare providers.
• Whether they wish to share the plan with family/whānau.

If the patient wants to proceed with a plan

• Ask them to sign a consent form and scan it into the patient record
• Document that a care plan has been developed: include the outcomes of your discussions.

Maintaining a record

• Update the patient record each time the plan is updated. The most recent plan in the patient record is the active plan.
• If the patient opts out of the plan at any stage, document this in the patient record along with their reasons.

Check HealthPathways: Care Plans for your region, and Collaborative Aotearoa: Care Planning in General Practice for more information.

Patient privacy

We take steps to protect patient information in the plan against unauthorised access and misuse. Only information relevant to the patient's condition is included.

The principal coordinator of care:

• gets the patient's informed consent for other clinicians to access the plan, and for family/whānau to view it
• documents the patient's consent in Medtech
• decides how much information should be accessible via the plan
• designates levels of access within electronic systems so that some parts of the plan may remain confidential.

See also: Shared Electronic Health Record

Keywords: shared care, shared care plan