How to set up care home proxy access

Who needs to be involved?

The following people need to be involved, depending on the level of access being granted:

  • Care home lead is the lead for the project and the person who will manage talking to residents and their representatives, brief other care home staff about the changes and what they will need to do, and work with the GP practice
  • GP practice lead to work with the care home project lead, set up proxy access accounts for the care home staff and link these to each named residents’ GP record
  • Care home staff who will order medication and access further information using the agreed process, understand their responsibility for security and confidentiality and be up to date with information governance training
  • GPs who will use existing process to authorise or reject medication requests and support proxy access to information, as locally agreed
  • Pharmacist who will use existing processes to dispense medication from the online ordering access
  • Residents (or their representatives) known to the GP practice who will give or refuse permission for care home staff to have proxy access to their GP record
  • Resident’s representative(s) where the resident cannot understand and make informed decisions for themselves, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) allows others to make those decisions for them. These would be one of the following:
    • someone with legal power of attorney (POA)
    • a court appointed deputy
    • the resident’s GP, or next of kin, if they consider proxy access is in the resident’s best interest.

A staff information leaflet is available for use when briefing a care home team.

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