The Universal Care Plan (UCP) will evolve into a broader personalised care and support plan from this December, supporting even more Londoners (21 October 2024).
The UCP is an NHS service that digitally shares personalised care plans with health and care professionals across the Capital to help ensure more patients receive the care and outcomes they desire.
Introduced in July 2022 to initially support end-of-life and palliative care planning, the UCP was extended in March this year to also support Londoners with sickle cell disease. The UCP has become a well-established tool with over 60,000 live care plans with around 25,000 views a month by health and care staff.
From this December the UCP will evolve into a broader personalised care and support plan to also support patients with other multiple long-term conditions including dementia, frailty and learning disabilities.
The UCP expansion follows a consultation where many health and care staff said that they wanted a more flexible digital care plan that could be used to support patients who may have other health needs, such as long-term conditions, and may not necessarily be receiving end-of-life care or palliative care.
The development of the new UCP template has taken place with close collaboration with both clinicians and people with lived experience to ensure it works effectively for everyone.
Nick Tigere, Head of the Universal Care Plan Programme, said:
“This is a very exciting time for the Universal Care Plan programme as we prepare to expand the tool into a broader personalised care and support plan. This is a significant moment for care planning in the Capital and offers so much potential for the UCP to make even more of a positive difference for Londoners. It is the culmination of a huge amount of work by so many different people and I would like to thank everyone involved.”
To help prepare for the change a range of resources will be available soon on the learn page of the UCP website including:
- A 10-minute training video highlighting key functionalities and providing an overview of the content.
- A quick reference guide outlining the contents of each form in the care plan.
- The training portal will be updated to reflect the ‘final’ version of the expanded UCP so health and care staff can familiarise themselves with it.
- Case studies that can be used to create example care plans on the training portal.
The UCP team will also host two webinars to explain the changes and to answer any questions:
You can find out more information about why the UCP expansion is happening and what it means here.