On the Way to Better Care: Shared Care Patient Data for Ambulance Crews

21 August 2025

Imagine if every UK ambulance crew arrived at a scene with instant access to a patient’s health and social care information - their frailty score, long-term conditions, care plans, and social risk factors.

Certain local areas already do this - and are doing it well - but what if every ambulance crew across the UK adopted this method of working and had access to population health insights en-route to the scene of an emergency? When applied to urgent care, this insight could transform decision-making, improve patient outcomes, and ease system pressures.

This series of thought leadership articles explores how local NHS successes could deliver national benefits if adopted by every Integrated Care System (ICS).

How Population Health Insights Can Help Paramedics

The aim, as defined by Graphnet, is to integrate rich, multi-source clinical and social data with analytics at individual and cohort levels. This means that while responding to a 999 call, ambulance crews could access vital information about a patient’s:

· Frailty score - to anticipate mobility, falls risk and specialist needs.

· Long-term conditions - to tailor treatment for comorbidities, such as diabetes, COPD or heart failure.

· Social risk factors - to understand the individual’s living situation, support networks and deprivation factors.

· Care plans - to respect end-of-life wishes, anticipate dementia related issues or mental health crisis strategies.

· Predictive analytics - to act on early warning scores and deterioration risks.

Faster Triage and Improved Response Decisions

Access to accurate, consolidated health records reduces delays, miscommunication and duplication. Evidence from pilots around the UK also shows it can improve routing in time-critical conditions, reduce errors and speed up care. All of this enables ambulance crews to:

· Make informed triage decisions on the way to the patient.

· Avoid dangerous information gaps (such as allergies and recent admissions).

· Pre-alert hospitals or bring specialist equipment when predictive analytics indicate high risk.

Admission Avoidance and Reduced A&E Pressures

According to Graphnet, “faster access to accurate records reduces medical errors and ensures timely treatment”, and paramedics “spend less time on scene when they can access critical data instantly, improving response times and workforce efficiency.”

Currently, about 52% of 999 incidents result in the patient being transported to A&E via ambulance. However, with richer patient data available on hand, paramedics can safely treat more people at home or refer them to community services. This reduces unnecessary hospital visits and relieves emergency department overcrowding - both of which are critical issues for UK hospitals.

This has been proven by:

· South Warwickshire, which has seen a 16% reduction in hospital transfers for patients over 75 due to an increase in remote consultant advice.

· London Ambulance frailty team has seen their conveyance rate halved from 70% to 35% when paired with community nurses.

· London mental health crisis plans have been accessed 731 times in one year, preventing many acute admissions.[MG1]

· Frimley ICS has seen the proactive identification of high-risk patients cut admissions by a third.

Continuity of Care and Personalised Treatment

Access to real-time population health data allows paramedics to deliver holistic, personalised, context-aware treatment to everyone, as they are fully informed by each patient’s medical history, social circumstances and preferences.

Rather than adopting a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to emergency care, access to full population health data and shared care records allows ambulance crews to ‘join up’ with existing plans, ensuring continuity of care remains a priority.

Shared records mean paramedics also ensure:

Care is always personalised and aligned with the patient’s wishes and medical history.
Respect is given for advance care directives, such as Do Not Resuscitate orders, preferred treatments or the involvement of community caregivers.
Patients feel known, seen and respected by the system and by the people providing them with care.
Better alignment of ambulance interventions with GPs, hospitals and community care pathways.

A recent Midlands initiative, titled ‘One Health and Care’, proved that shared records saved A&E clinicians 450 hours per week by providing them with instant access to integrated health and social data. These same benefits can apply to the ambulance service.

Better Patient Outcomes, Safety and Satisfaction

Empowering ambulance crews with the right information at the right time improves both patient safety and patient satisfaction. Graphnet highlights that “integrated care systems… reduce errors by removing crucial informational gaps like medication history or allergies.”

By obtaining population health data en route to a scene, it enables paramedics to:

· Make safer clinical decisions by avoiding inappropriate interventions or unsafe medication choices, such as not realising a patient is on anticoagulants.

· Ensure faster, more accurate diagnosis.

· Remove the risk of redundant tests or repeated testing by knowing a patient’s prior records. For example, if the crew knows an unconscious patient’s last blood sugar reading already, they can avoid repeating tests or giving them a potentially harmful drug.

· Respect patient preferences and ensure care is continued and coordinated. By accessing population health insights, ambulance crews can acknowledge a patient’s known conditions and immediately build trust and confidence.

· Enable more patients to die in their preferred place, often at home, rather than in a hospital. Access to shared electronic care plans ensures paramedics are aware of a patient’s end-of-life wishes and existing community support.

Efficiency for Both Ambulance Services and the Wider NHS

There are significant benefits to using population health insights for both the UK’s ambulance service and the NHS as a whole - the most obvious being the crucial time savings that can be made for front line staff.

Currently, paramedics spend a considerable amount of time on-scene gathering information or phoning other providers for background about patients. However, Graphnet shows how instant access to this data can markedly reduce on-scene time.

Alongside vital time savings, having access to integrated patient data leads to:

· Improved patient turnaround and availability of ambulances for other call-outs.

· Faster and more streamlined hospital handovers. Ambulance handover delays currently harm an estimated 1,000 patients a day in England.

· Avoidance of unnecessary conveyances, therefore freeing up more ambulance journeys, crew time, A&E resources and hospital bed capacity.

· Substantial cost savings for the NHS. For example, a review of electronic palliative care coordination in Richmond estimated savings of £687,000 per year: the equivalent of around £3,000 saved per avoided admission.

· Increase in workforce productivity. In the Midlands, A&E staff saved 450 hours per week by using an integrated record system instead of performing manual information requests.

· More efficient triage, enabling paramedics to provide patients with the most appropriate care first time, reducing repeat 999 calls or re-admissions. A recent study showed that providing paramedics with phone support improves system capacity by removing the need for an ambulance in many cases.

How Graphnet Health Can Help

Graphnet Health enables ICSs to give ambulance crews real-time population health insights, helping them make quicker, safer and more personalised decisions. By connecting shared records, remote monitoring and targeted interventions, it supports continuity of care, reduces avoidable admissions and eases hospital pressures.

Proven in Frimley with measurable improvements and multimillion-pound savings, this digital-first model shows how integrated data can free NHS resources and improve patient outcomes. With strong evidence from local pilots, scaling this approach nationally offers a clear path to more efficient urgent care and better results for patients and staff alike.

Learn how Graphnet Health supports NHS-wide transformation.