‘Shared care’ is a term used within the NHS to describe the situation where a specialist Doctor/Consultant wishes to pass the patient’s care, such as the prescribing of medication, over to their General Practitioner (GP). This is something that can be requested but the guidance for all medications is that this may only be done if the GP agrees.
In each case, the GP will need to consider a number of factors to decide if this is safe.
The General Medical Council (GMC), with whom every GP is registered to practice, provides some specific guidance with regards to ‘shared care’.
Details are available:
Our Position
We will not enter into a Shared Care Agreement with any private (non-NHS) provider.
All NHS Shared Care Agreement requests will be at the discretion of the Medical Director, Dr Anil Shah.
Consideration would only be given to a Shared Care Agreement if the request has originated from a secondary care consultant.
Shared care agreements and the associated workload falls outside of the GP Practice GMS (General Medical Services) Contract. This can have an impact on patient care for others due to the increased and unfunded workload in the prescribing and monitoring of highly specialised drugs/medication.
If care is agreed by the Medical Director to be transferred, then from this point the primary care prescriber (Dr Shah and team) will be responsible for the prescriptions they sign. The patient must be prepared to ensure they engage with the blood tests/monitoring as requested by the Practice. Should this not occur, the practice will TERMINATE the agreement and refer the patient back to hospital care.