Transfer of Care - Acute Inpatient Discharge Standard
Establishes consistency in the creation and issue of transfer of care acute inpatient discharge documents from acute trusts to GP Practice systems.
About this standard
- Publisher
- NHS England
- Reference code
- DAPB4042 Amd 75/2021
- Publication date
- 03/02/2022
- Status
- Active
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Active. Active standards are stable, maintained and have been approved, assured or endorsed for use by qualified bodies.
Deprecated Deprecated standards are available for use and are maintained, but are being phased out, so new functionality will not be added.
Retired standards Retired standards are not being maintained or supported and should not be used.
- Standard type
- Information standards
- Technical standards and specifications
Show definitions of standard types
Collections. A Collection is a systematic gathering of a specified selection of data or information for a particular stated purpose from existing records held within health and care systems and electronic devices.
Extractions. An extraction is a type of collection that is pulled from an operational system by the data controller and transmitted to the receiver without additional processing or transcription by the sender.
Information standards. Information standards are agreed ways of doing something, written down as a set of precise criteria so they can be used as rules, guidelines, or definitions.
Technical Standards and specifications. Technical standards and specifications specify how to make information available technically including how the data is structured and transported.
- Contact point
Link to standard
- Documentation
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- Applies to
- NHS Acute Trusts providing ordinary and day case admissions.
- Independent providers of ordinary/day case admissions in NHS secondary care.
- Impacts on
- Implementation of this information standard impacts all health IT systems suppliers providing systems to the above providers; suppliers should work with their customers to determine necessary changes. Implementation within GP IT systems is managed through NHS Digital’s GP IT Futures framework.
- Associated medias
- GP IT Futures framework Implementation within GP IT systems is managed through NHS Digital’s GP IT Futures framework.
- GP IT Futures framework
- Is part of
- Transfer of Care Initiative The Transfer of Care initiative has been mandated by the NHS Standard Contract. It includes a group of related standards covering inpatient, emergency care, mental health and outpatient settings.
- Transfer of Care Initiative
- Conformance date
- 31/10/2022
- Effective from
- 01/04/2022
Topics and care settings
- Topic
- Continuity of care
- Key care information
- Messaging
- Care setting
- Hospital
Dependencies and related standards
- Dependencies
- Related standards
Review Information
- Scope
- NHS Services
- Sponsor
Dave Turner, Chief Technology Officer, NHS England and NHS Improvement
- Senior Responsible Officer
Ian Townend, Chief Architect, NHS England and NHS Improvement
- Business Lead
- Mike Moore, Project Manager, NHS Digital
- Approval date
- 31/01/2022
- Post Implementation review Date
- 31/10/2023
Legal basis and endorsements
- Legal authority
Section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012
This information standard is published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
Conformance with this standard is a requirement of the NHS Standard Contract, Service Condition 11.
More information
This information standard presents a combined product which aims to improve patient care through the digital transfer of structured inpatient and day case discharge documents from secondary care to GP practices.
This is achieved through bringing together multiple components (“layers”) to support the recording of information and the onward transmission to, and receipt by, GP IT systems.
These layers are:
- Clinical: use of the Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) eDischarge standard as the underlying information model (at release 2.1).
- Terminology: alignment with the national information standards SCCI0034 SNOMED CT and SCCI0052 Dictionary of medicines and devices (dm+d).
- Technology and representation: use of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) profiles to pull together the structured information required to send to the GP IT system.
- Transport: use of the Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH) for the transmission of the FHIR representation to the GP IT system.
The standard helps to achieve the ambitions of the NHS Digital Transfer of Care initiative and is the first in a series of standards to be released over the coming months (covering emergency care, mental health and outpatient settings). While the Transfer of Care initiative has been mandated by the NHS Standard Contract, it has only lately been possible for all GP IT systems to successfully receive the discharge correspondence through this initiative.
Page last updated: 29 August 2024