Shared care medicines are medicines where the responsibility of prescribing and monitoring is shared between your GP practice and your specialist. In order to help with sharing these responsibilities, Shared Care Agreements are used.
What is a Shared Care Agreement?
A Shared Care Agreement is an agreement between you, your GP practice, and your hospital consultant. It enables the care and treatment you receive for a specific health condition to be shared between the hospital and your GP practice.
There are two requirements for a Shared Care Agreement to be put in place:
- It can only occur with your agreement
- Your condition must be stable or as expected
A Shared Care Agreement contains information about your medicine, guidance on prescribing and monitoring and the responsibilities of your consultant (in the hospital), your GP practice and you. The Shared Care Agreement means that when the hospital has started prescribing your medicine, it can be continued by your GP practice, so you won’t have to visit the hospital to collect your medicine.
You, your consultant, and your GP will need to sign the Shared Care Agreement. This means you accept managing your care in this way and the associated responsibilities.
How does shared care work?
- The consultant is a specialist in the condition for which you are being treated and with your agreement, will start prescribing a medicine, making sure it is suitable for you.
- The consultant will arrange for appropriate monitoring to be carried out, including blood tests.
- If this this monitoring is suitable to be carried out by your GP practice your consultant will discuss a Shared Care Agreement with you and will contact your GP practice.
- Once your GP practice has agreed to the Shared Care Agreement, the GP practice will be able to prescribe the same medicine for you at the dose recommended by the consultant and ensure relevant on-going monitoring takes place.
If you would like more information about Share Care Agreements used in Mid and South Essex, please contact mseicb.enquiries@nhs.net