We tend to trust our health systems and the professionals within it wholeheartedly. Yet, while we’re extremely lucky to have a National Health Service, the service isn’t without its complexities and limitations. The data held by the many different healthcare organisations within the NHS isn’t always aligned. Systems aren’t always joined up and important health information isn’t always shared.
Healthcare professionals can only work with the information and systems they have access to. It’s not unreasonable to say that your health is a shared responsibility between you, health experts, the system, and the people in your life. It takes all these components working together to optimise your health.
In this article we explore how, using technology, you can work with your doctor, ensuring they have all the important information about you and your health that they need to advise, and support you to the best of their ability.
You’re in control
One of the paths to optimising your health lies in the Evergreen Life app. From the palm of your hand, you can access your Electronic Health Record (EHR) – an online version of your GP medical record AND you can access your Personal Health Record (PHR).
Your PHR is owned and curated by you. It’s different from the medical history/GP record held by different parts of the NHS. That’s really a record of when you’ve been ill or seen a doctor. Comprising information around allergies, supplements and body measurements added by you, your PHR can contain your GP medical record AND valuable details about your overall health which aren’t recorded anywhere else. It’s a way to build and control the best possible picture of your health.
Why bother populating your PHR and aligning it with your GP record?
If the above isn’t enough to convince you think of it this way:
Have you looked at your GP records and wondered why they didn’t seem to have information about one of your conditions or that they seemed to think you had a condition you didn’t know about? Ever been to the GP and found they weren’t yet aware of a change to your diagnosis or medication following a hospital visit?
You may also have had a diagnosis that you weren’t fully aware of or didn’t understand the terminology around it. A great example of this is early low-level chronic kidney disease. Our kidneys slowly decline as we age and routine blood tests may reveal early signs of this, but, as it isn’t significant enough to cause any harm at this early stage, it may not have been brought to your attention. However, it would have been recorded in your GP medical record and, if you’ve linked your Evergreen Life app to your GP, you may have seen consultation and results documents where your doctor had noticed these early signs. With access to your GP medical record and by maintaining your own PHR, you can ask your doctor about anything like this you’re unsure about.
Communication within the NHS has improved dramatically since the introduction of online GP medical records. However, with more and more providers working within the system (GPs, hospitals, community teams, private providers to name just a few!) it’s sometimes possible that information may not get successfully transferred into your GP medical record or the transfer may be delayed. This is why identifying and sharing any information about your health that may not be recorded anywhere else or that your doctor may be unaware of is so helpful.
Where can you make sure your GP record and PHR match?
Currently in the Evergreen Life app, simply head to the ‘Records’ section from the home screen and tap the green ‘Go to records’ button. From there, you’re faced with two options ‘Personal Records’ – which will lead you to your PHR – and ‘GP Records’ – which takes you to your GP medical record. By choosing ‘Personal Records’ you can explore the following sections and populate the fields relevant to you:
- Conditions
- Allergies/Intolerances
- Medications
- Medication Diary
- Measurements
- Vaccinations
- Documents and Letters
- Trusted Access
We’ve automated parts of the process for you…
If you’ve linked your Evergreen Life app with your GP practice, we’ll populate the Medications and Conditions portions of your PHR with relevant information from your GP record. You can edit these entries in your PHR if they’re not quite right, perhaps because your circumstances have changed since you last saw your GP, or just confirm that they’re all still up-to-date. It’s important to note that you’ll need to tell your GP separately about these changes, as your PHR isn’t synchronised with your GP record.
Next time you’re sat in your doctor’s office, and they’d like to know what vaccine you had at the hospital the other month, you can whip out your phone and tell them – provided you remembered to record it in your PHR soon after having the injection! Likewise, you can share your PHR with anyone – be it a family member or healthcare professional – with an Evergreen Life account via the Trusted Access feature (they’ll be invited to create an account if you pop their email address in and they don’t have one already). This is super handy in the unfortunate event you’re in A&E and not in a state of mind to communicate with those treating you. More accurate and efficient treatment awaits you…
1. What are the benefits of ensuring your diagnoses in your PHR and GP record match?
- More accurate coding. The NHS and your GP use various codes to run searches for people at risk of or who have certain conditions, to check patients are receiving the proper treatment, medications and support. Highlighting any conditions, for example, those you may have been diagnosed with by a private practitioner, or medications or allergies you have that aren’t in your GP medical record, to your doctor can help them see if any codes they’re using to refer to your medications or conditions need correcting.
You can flag any discrepancies to your GP by:
- contacting your GP surgery,
- physically showing your PHR to your doctor or nurse on your phone screen at your next scheduled appointment or
- sharing your PHR with your GP via Trusted Access, as explained above.
Doing this will help professionals in other areas of the NHS be better informed when they treat you. Inaccurate coding can affect eligibility for certain NHS programmes, such as vaccination for certain clinically vulnerable groups. This was the case during the COVID vaccination campaign where the NHS knowing information about you affected your eligibility for the vaccines and boosters.
- More accurate diagnosis. By checking if there’s anything in your PHR that you don’t recognise, you’ll know to discuss it further with your GP at your next appointment. It may be that your diagnosis has changed overtime too, such as a presumed diagnosis being coded into your GP record by your doctor but later, after further tests, a different diagnosis was revealed that hasn’t been reflected in your PHR. Checking for missing, unexpected, out-of-date or inaccurate diagnosis information in your PHR means you can contact your GP to correct it or flag it to them at your next appointment.
- Better understanding. Do you know what all the terminology in your GP record means? You may see terms you’re unsure of or that may have been communicated to you in a more straight-forward manner verbally by your doctor but then recorded in an unfamiliar way in your GP medical record. For example, you might have had a blood test and been told you’re a bit anemic, but your result in your PHR doesn’t say that exactly, it says it in a different way leading to you misunderstanding. You can learn what different terminology means on trusted sites like the NHS’ Conditions page, or you can clarify with a suitable health professional at your next appointment.
2. What are the benefits of aligning your PHR with your GP record when it comes to medications?
- Safer. If your GP isn’t aware of over-the-counter medications, hospital-prescribed medications or supplements you’re taking, this may affect how safely they can both prescribe and monitor your medicines:
- Some medication can be harmful to take if you have certain conditions. For instance, ibuprofen can be unsafe to take if you have stomach ulcers or significant kidney disease.
- Other medicines interact with different medications and supplements you take in a negative way. The herbal medicine, St John’s Wort can increase the metabolism of some oral contraceptives and therefore potentially cause breakthrough bleeds and insufficient contraceptive cover, for example.
- Even things like multi-vitamins can have surprising impacts, such as affecting how your doctor interprets your blood test results, if they don’t know you’re taking supplements.
The person prescribing your medication needs to have all the information on what you’re currently taking. Filling your PHR with what medication and supplements you’re taking, the dosage, frequency, along with when and why you’re taking them, helps keep your doctor in the loop.
- Improved compliance. Sometimes you might stop taking a medication, reduce the dose or change the timing of a medicine. Perhaps it didn’t agree with you, gave you side effects or you felt you no longer needed it. If your doctor isn’t aware of if, when and how much medication you’re taking, it may result in them offering you inappropriate advice and monitoring. This can be confusing and could even be harmful in some cases. Doctors need up to date and accurate information to support you to safely manage your health and medications. Check you’re taking your medication at the time and frequency the professional prescribed it asked. By updating your PHR with the medications you’re currently taking, you can make sure you’re following the regime your doctor has set.
Helpfully, your PHR in the Evergreen Life app has a neat Medication Diary that provides useful reminders on when to take your medication and record when you’ve taken it. Plus, if you’re GP linked, when your medications are loaded into your PHR from the GP record, it checks whether you’re taking them correctly or have stopped them so you can talk to your GP if things have changed.
- More efficiency, less waste. The doses of medication you take are sometimes changed in secondary care or you may increase or reduce your doses/how often you take a given medicine. Making sure your GP knows what you’re taking, how much and how frequently, can ensure you get your prescriptions in a timely and accurate manner, and prevents medicine wastage or delays in prescribing them to you.
3. How does populating and aligning your PHR improve your app experience?
- More personalised content. Overtime, we can use the information you supply in your PHR to provide you with more relevant guidance about nutrition and lifestyle. We can also send you clinically-reviewed Wellness Checks (questionnaires covering Food, Fitness, Happiness and other aspects of wellbeing) that are more applicable to you.
- More streamlined experience. By keeping your PHR up to date, some of the answer fields in the Wellness Checks you do will pre-populate, so you don’t have to input, say your date of birth, again as the app will pull the info from your PHR. As a bonus, when you complete Wellness Checks, certain information you give in answer to questions asked, such as your blood pressure and vitamin D levels, automatically populates the matching field in your PHR – making it one less thing for you to add. In the longer term, completing these Wellness Checks will also give your GP more helpful data and insights about your lifestyle.
- Helping the wider community. When your PHR is brimming with accurate information, we can use the anonymised data and combine it with what we know about other members in our Evergreen community. This allows our data team to spot trends, correlations and patterns between different behaviours and health outcomes, so we can help inform medical research.
Just as your nurse can’t take your medication for you, or your physiotherapist can’t carry out your prescribed exercises on your behalf, your doctor can’t populate your PHR for you. If you haven’t already, start enriching your PHR – your future self will thank you – we promise!
Reviewed by:
Anna Keeble MA BA Wellbeing Expert
Dr Claire Marie Thomas MRCGP DFSRH DTMH DipNLP MBChB BMedSci Medical Expert
