Electronic Palliative Care Coordinating Systems (EPaCCS)
Why is information sharing important?
Electronic Palliative Care Coordination Systems, or EPaCCS, is a means to capture and share information from people’s discussions about their care. The aim of this is to ensure that any professional involved in that person’s care has access to the most up to date information, including any changes to their preferences and wishes and personalised care plans.
The core record is usually kept by the General Practitioner in their electronic system and information sharing agreements put into place to allow relevant professionals involved in the person’s care to view and therefore be aware of the individual’s palliative and end of life personalised care plan.
What support is there for professionals?
Using standard codes to record EPaCCS: Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) is a clinical vocabulary readable by computers. Used in electronic health records, SNOMED CT is the most comprehensive and precise terminology product. SNOMED CT gives clinical IT systems a single shared language, which makes exchanging information between systems easier, safer and more accurate. It contains all the clinical terms needed for the whole NHS, from procedures and symptoms through to clinical measurements, diagnoses and medications.
SCCI1580: Palliative Care Co-ordination is the recommended information standard to recording in EPaCCS. This information standard specifies the core content to be held in electronic palliative care co-ordination systems (EPaCCS) and supports NHS England’s objective to increase the use of technology to help people manage their health and care. All Electronic Palliative Care Co-ordination Systems (EPaCCS) must comply with this information standard.
What is the network doing to support professionals?
In the North West Coast localities are working in collaboration to strengthen their access to information sharing via EPaCCS with the ultimate aim to have a full EPaCCS system in place in all care settings. The network facilitates quarterly meetings to bring together the leads for each area to ensure peer support, problem solving, finding solutions and providing some data to measure improvements. The Network also links in with the National End of Life Care Team for NHS England to ensure we are fully updated with the national digital programme.
A webinar recorded by Dr Sinead Clarke, GP and Clinical Lead in Cheshire CCG, recorded in November 2021, informs us why EPaCCS is so important.
For the Public
EPaCCS Patient Information Leaflet
People’s Voice is a group of lay people with lived experience of, or an interest in, palliative and end of life care. If you would like to join our People’s Voice you can find more information here.