What is shared care?
Shared care is a formal local agreement that enables General Practitioners (GPs) to accept responsibility for the safe prescribing and monitoring of specialist medicines.
Shared care provides transfer of care from a specialist to the GP, where this is suitable and in the patient’s best interests.
The patient is not usually discharged by the specialist and care is shared between the patient, the GP and the specialist.
What is the specialist’s role in shared care?
Confirm the diagnosis and start prescribing the medicine.
Provide the patient with written and spoken information about the medicine.
Prescribe and monitor the medicine until the dose is stable.
Explain shared care to the patient, answer any questions and discuss any concerns.
Write to the GP and request shared care when the condition and medicine are stable. Prescribe and monitor the medicine while waiting for the GP to decide about shared care.
Provide advice to the GP if this is asked for.
Review the medicine at regular intervals to make sure it is still safe and effective.
What is the GP’s role in shared care?
Review specialist requests for shared care of medicines promptly.
If the GP doesn’t agree to shared care, they will write to the specialist within 14 days, giving reasons.
If accepting shared care, prescribe and monitor the medicine as set out in the specialist’s instructions and in the shared care agreement.
Report any serious side effects to the specialist.
Make sure the patient is given appointments for monitoring the medicine.
What is the patient’s role in shared care?
Take the medicine as agreed.
Request repeat prescriptions from the GP in enough time.
Attend follow up monitoring appointments with the GP and the specialist.
Report suspected side effects to the specialist or GP.
Is shared care possible between a private healthcare provider and a GP?
Shared care with private healthcare providers is only possible when this service is being provided for the patient on behalf of the NHS.
If a patient is seeing a private specialist, and that service is not being provided on behalf of the NHS, shared care medicines would usually need to be supplied by the private specialist.
If a patient would like to obtain the shared care medicine through the NHS, they should talk to their GP about having care for their condition transferred to the local NHS.
ADHD and private sector shared care agreements
As a practice we do not accept any ADHD shared care agreements from private clinics or specialists.
If a patient is diagnosed with ADHD in the private sector we can facilitate referrals to the NHS service where possible or inform the NHS clinic if they are on a waiting list. In the meantime any prescribing or reviews will need to be undertaken by the diagnosing specialist.