Any healthcare professional that is involved in your care will be able to see your care plan. This includes paramedics and other staff who may be involved in your care during an emergency. Other professionals such as your nurse or doctor will also be able to see and update your care plan whenever necessary.

Speak to your healthcare professional, such as your GP or nurse if you would like to know more about starting a care plan. 

The next development for the Universal Care Plan is to enable you to view and update your care plan. If you are interested in being involved in the design, please use our contact form on the Contact Us page. We would love to involve you in this piece of work.

Speak to your healthcare professional if you would like to see an up to date version of your care plan. A way to enable you to view or edit your care plans is in development which will enable you to view or edit your care plan in the future. If you are interested in being involved in the design, please use our contact form on the Contact Us page. We would love to involve you in this piece of work.

If you choose that you no longer wish to have a care plan accessible to healthcare professionals or you do not wish to have a care plan created for you in the first instance, you should consult your healthcare professional. We ask you to think carefully before making this decision as sharing your health and social care information will make it easier for services to provide the best treatment and care for you.

If you choose to opt-out:

• You may have to answer questions repeatedly because your full history may not be available to the care professional assessing you.
• Decisions about your care may take longer, even in emergency situations, as history needs to be confirmed.
• Your choices and wishes regarding your care will not be known to emergency services if you become unconscious or do not have the capacity to make your wishes known.

We ensure the information we hold is kept in secure locations and access is restricted to authorised staff only. All staff are obliged to always keep the information secure and confidential at all times and not share it with other colleagues without proper authorisation.

The NHS Digital Code of Practice on Confidential Information applies to all of our staff, and they are required to protect your information, inform you of how your information will be used, and allow you to decide if and how your information can be shared. All staff with access to Personal Data are trained to ensure information is always kept confidential.

Our Universal Care Plan System Privacy Notice sets out our technical and security measures. 

If a patient has died, when the patient’s care plan is next opened by a healthcare professional, it will automatically update to show that the patient is deceased. The care plan will no longer be flagged to the urgent care services, however the care plan remains on the UCP system, marked as a deceased care plan. Clinicians that were involved in the care of the patient can assess the care plan, for example, to complete an after death report. If preferred, the patient’s next of kin or lasting power of attorney can request for the record to be withdrawn from the system, meaning this can no longer be accessed by any clinician. In this case, the record of the deceased citizen is therefore stored and subsequently destroyed in line with the NHS data retention policy. Withdrawing a care plan can be completed by a healthcare professional who has been involved in the patient’s care.

Please speak to a healthcare professional for more information.