The Universal Care Plan (UCP) has now become a broader personalised care and support plan to help tens of thousands more Londoners with long term conditions (23 January 2025).

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.

In addition to supporting urgent care, palliative or end-of-life care and people with sickle cell disease, the UCP now also supports citizens with other long-term conditions including dementia, frailty, carer contingency, learning disabilities and autism.

The UCP has also been updated so it can be used across the patient’s entire lifespan, from childhood through to adulthood helping to ensure that vulnerable children and young people’s needs are also shared with emergency services, during a crisis.

Since its launch in July 2024 the UCP has become a well established and vital tool with over 70,000 care plans created on the platform. This expansion is a significant step that has the potential to bring even greater improvements to care in the Capital.

This 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:

“I am proud of the positive difference the UCP has already made for Londoners receiving palliative or end of life care or for those with sickle cell disease. Expanding the UCP to support people with other long term conditions is a really significant moment for care planning in the Capital and offers so much potential to help thousands more people. It is the culmination of a huge amount of work by so many different people and I would like to thank everyone involved.”

Katherine Buxton, UCP Clinical Lead for the Universal Care Plan, said:

“The expansion of the UCP, to support personalised care planning and the ageing population, is critical to supporting more people across the Capital. We have worked collaboratively with different clinical groups to ensure our new expanded template meets the needs of our patients. We will continue collaborating together over the coming months to support the implementation of the expanded UCP for the benefit of patients.”

Barbara Benedek, member of the UCP’s People with Lived Experience Group, said:

“As a patient, it is reassuring to me to know that, if I need medical care urgently, the paramedics, A&E staff and others who will look after me, will know about my medical conditions, my medication and my wishes about my care. That is what the UCP does for Londoners. As the patients on the lived experience group involved in developing the new UCP template, our role has been to ensure that patient’s needs and wishes are at the core of the UCP.”

A range of new resources have been developed to help health and care staff prepare for the expanded UCP template. These are available on the learn page of the UCP website.

You can find out more information about the UCP expansion and what it means here.