Shared Care Agreements

What is a Shared Care Agreement?

Shared care monitoring is an agreement between primary care (the GP Surgery) and secondary care (an NHS or private team/hospital) to both share the responsibility of monitoring a condition and prescribing a medication for a patient.

There is a clear document which outlines who is responsible for which part of the patients care, what monitoring is needed and how frequently this is undertaken and by whom. The patient remains under the care of both the GP and the specialist for as long as they need the treatment/monitoring. This will include at least an annual review with your specialist team.

In these circumstances, the medication is always started by the secondary care team due to it's specialist nature and the need for their expert input.

Shared care is only commenced on agreement of both parties when the patient is already established and stable on medication and only if the GP practice is able to provide the checks and monitoring needed for safe prescribing. This is to comply with the GMC's guidance for "Good Medical Practice".

A GP Practice can decline to accept the shared care if they do not feel the diagnosis to be reliable, are not safely able to meet the needs of the agreement, or if the input provided by the secondary care team is not felt to be of a suitable quality to ensure patient safety.

As each patient may have different co-existing health conditions, and be on other medication, the monitoring needed as part of the shared care agreement may differ from person to person. This is why we cannot give any guarantee that we can take on a shared care agreement until we have seen what is being requested for that individual.

** After a review and careful consideration, the Practice is no longer accepting any new Adult (16+) shared care monitoring requests for ADHD. This applies to all NHS, NHS "Right to Choose", and Private agreement requests. Your care will need to remain with the specialist team. Not all providers are able to offer ongoing care and prescribing, so please consider this before embarking on any referral pathway.

Any existing ADHD shared care agreements remain unaffected and any agreements for children will continue to be assessed in an individual basis. **

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