The CMC service works by sharing a patient’s data among professionals who may be caring for them. This places an extra responsibility on us to safeguard the information, and we take it extremely seriously.
From the outset, we have built protections into our systems to keep patients – and their data – safe in our hands.
Coordinate My Care (CMC) is an NHS initiative, hosted by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, that has been in place since August 2010. It permits the key information about an individual and their preferences for care (an Urgent Care Plan) to be recorded and accessed by a range of NHS and non-NHS service providers.
The CMC service is enabled by a dedicated IT system (provided, hosted and managed since November 2015 by InterSystems), whose user interface is available via a web browser over the N3 network. There is no requirement to install any software or browser plugin on the client PC. Access is also available from non-N3 clients via the Royal Marsden’s two-factor authentication solution, Authen2cate.
Patients consent explicitly to the sharing of their Urgent Care Plan with care providers. A Joint Data Controller Information Sharing Agreement, backed by a tried and tested CMC IG Pathway, is in place across all CMC user organisations, and has over 1,000 signatories. CMC is used across both NHS and non-NHS organisations.
All the organisations involved have signed formal agreements that govern how care plan information is used and protected, and they undertake to provide CMC with updated lists of staff who are trained and authorised to access the system.
It is important to emphasise that the CMC care plan is not a legally binding document: a clinician who chooses a method of care that is not expressed will be able to support their decision-making with sound clinical reasoning.
An Advance Decision to Refuse Treatment (ADRT) may be attached to the CMC plan. If the ADRT is valid and applicable, it has legally binding status, whether it sits within CMC or not.
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