Direct care is the care of an identified patient by an identified clinical professional, used throughout the
National Health Service in the
United Kingdom.
In late 2023, it became the focus of the first public uses of the NHS purchase of
Palantir softwar
Definition
The Second Caldicott Report, chaired by Dame Fiona Caldicott
Dame Fiona Caldicott, ( Soesan; 12 January 1941 – 15 February 2021) was a British psychiatrist and psychotherapist who also served as Principal (college), Principal of Somerville College, Oxford She was the National Data Guardian for Health a ...
, defined direct care as:
There is no consensus on whether the definition should include measures of person satisfaction including measurement of outcomes undertaken by one or more registered and regulated health or social care professionals and their team with whom the individual has a legitimate relationship for their care. Such considerations may come under individual audit mechanisms, however healthcare systems may seek wider access for the purposes of their bureaucracy
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
.
Direct Care is contrasted with Secondary Uses, which are all other uses of medical records, usually as bulk personal datasets
"Bulk personal datasets" is the UK government's euphemism for datasets containing personally identifiable information on a large number of individuals, as part of mass surveillance in the United Kingdom and on citizens around the world.
The ter ...
, some of which have been the source of international controversy. Examples of secondary uses include health care analytics
Health care analytics is the health care analysis activities that can be undertaken as a result of data collected from four areas within healthcare; claims and cost data, pharmaceutical and research and development (R&D) data, clinical data (collec ...
, risk stratification
Broadly speaking, a risk assessment is the combined effort of:
# identifying and analyzing potential (future) events that may negatively impact individuals, assets, and/or the environment (i.e. hazard analysis); and
# making judgments "on the to ...
, medical research
Medical research (or biomedical research), also known as experimental medicine, encompasses a wide array of research, extending from "basic research" (also called ''bench science'' or ''bench research''), – involving fundamental scientif ...
, and pharmaceutical marketing. Uses of health care records without patient consent are controversial.
Direct care in nursing
In nursing, direct care of a patient is provided personally by a staff member. Direct patient care may involve any aspects of the health care of a patient, including treatments, counselling, self-care, patient education and administration of medication.
Limitations of audit
In the second report for the Department of Health, Fiona Caldicott wrote that:
See also
* Shared care Shared care involves the establishment of partnerships between professionals and laymen in which they share a common goal. Examples are an improvement in the health of a patient where there is patient empowerment to take a major degree of responsib ...
* Caldicott Report
* Fiona Caldicott
Dame Fiona Caldicott, ( Soesan; 12 January 1941 – 15 February 2021) was a British psychiatrist and psychotherapist who also served as Principal (college), Principal of Somerville College, Oxford She was the National Data Guardian for Health a ...
References
External links
* {{cite book , title=Report on the review of patient-identifiable information , url=http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4068403 , archivedate=7 January 2013 , archiveurl=http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130107105354/http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4068403 , publisher= Department of Health , date=1 December 1997
National Health Service