However, care leaders criticise NHS Modernisation Bill launched this week for failing to include social care providers in a proposed data-sharing obligation.
A national single patient record proposed in new NHS legislation could boost safer, more person-centred care for older people with frailty and dementia, according to a geriatrician leader.
But care leaders have criticised the government for failing to include social care providers in the NHS Modernisation Bill's proposed duty to share patient data alongside NHS providers.
The British Geriatrics Society's Dr Deb Gompertz said the proposed new law requiring NHS providers to share patient information " has the potential to improve continuity of care" and "supports safer, more joined-up, person-centred care for older people who often live with multiple long-term conditions, including frailty and dementia".
And Dr Maurice Cohen, consultant geriatrician at North Middlesex Hospital and clinical director of the London Frailty Network, said the reform would allow the NHS to “wrap ourselves around the patient rather than the patient wrapping themselves around us”.
The measures contained in the NHS Modernisation Bill require NHS organisations across England to share patient information through a single digital record. For older people receiving care from multiple teams across health and social care, the changes are intended to reduce fragmented decision‑making and repeated assessments, the government said, while supporting more coordinated care closer to home in line with the government's Ten Year NHS Plan programme of reform.
The Department of Health and Social Care said better access to shared records will 'reduce A&E attendances by allowing better community care for frailty patients and reducing misdiagnoses'.
However, Care England chief executive Professor Martin Green said that, although the "ambition behind the single patient record" is welcome, "ambition and duty are not the same thing."
"While the Government's own language speaks of bringing together data from across 'different care settings,' the Bill's data-sharing obligation falls on NHS providers alone," he said.
He called for adult social care providers to be included in the data sharing duty to solve a situation where care workers' access to up-to-date medical records remains patchy, inconsistent and unreliable across the sector," and said care provider leaders should be consulted and "stand ready" to support a consultation.
It added that clinicians will gain 'improved access to shared records' from 'as early as' next year, initially covering maternity and frailty care, and has previously said patients in England will be able to securely view a core set of health information through the NHS App from 2028.
