Case Study - Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust & Shropshire Community Health Trusts

Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust (MPFT) and Shropshire Community Health Trust (SCHT) are neighbouring Trusts serving an overlapping population across Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, and Staffordshire.

MPFT delivers integrated physical health, mental health, learning disability, and social care services; SCHT delivers community physical health services.

For many patients, both Trusts play a role in their care, yet clinicians on each side had no consistent, real-time view of what was happening across organisations, and sometimes across internal teams.

Both Trusts use Rio EPR as their Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system, but operating as two separate Rio instances meant clinicians were forced into time-consuming manual searches to build a picture of a patient's full journey. The result was gaps in care continuity, duplication of effort, repeated questioning of patients, and unnecessary clinical risk.

As Pam Kaur, Head of Digital Systems Maturity and Strategy at MPFT, puts it: "It's such a pain not being able to get information when you need it at the time that you need it to make the right decisions."

What was needed was not a new system, but a smarter connection between the ones already in place.

MPFT and SCHT partnered to implement Access Intelligent Care Platform (AICP), which connects both Rio systems and surfaces a unified, enhanced view of patient information across the two organisations. For the first time, clinicians can see relevant records from both Trusts in one place, enabling more informed decisions, safer care, and a genuinely joined-up patient experience.

The implementation was built on shared governance, aligned clinical objectives, and a joint commitment to embedding the platform in everyday practice. SCHT onboarded four pilot services, each representing a different clinical team, with no negative user feedback reported. MPFT rollout progressed in parallel.

For Pam Kaur, the experience of working across two organisations stood out as much as the technology itself. "We felt like one team. That was brilliant. And you don't normally see that in the NHS."

Clinician feedback has been overwhelmingly positive since go-live. As Pam notes: "After deploying it, how easy this is to use in comparison to our shared care record - the data is a lot richer. That's the feedback from the clinicians."

Admiral Nursing team

With AICP, nurses can confirm MPFT dementia diagnoses instantly, without calling the access team or waiting for a clinician to respond. They can check whether a carer has been admitted as an inpatient, see whether a case is open to adult social care, and view the Rio records. For a team supporting some of the most vulnerable patients in the system, this joined-up view makes every interaction safer and better informed.

Care Home MDT team

MDT nurses can now see upcoming MPFT appointments, referral status, and previous progress notes before visiting a care home resident, giving families accurate information rather than uncertainty. Arriving at multidisciplinary team meetings with a fuller picture of each resident's healthcare involvement has changed the quality of those conversations.

Paediatric Psychology team

Clinicians can see whether a referral to BEU has been made, track its status in near real time, and understand why a referral was rejected, enabling them to act immediately rather than leaving families waiting without explanation. Named clinician identification means direct, informed calls rather than being passed around a switchboard.

Safeguarding Nurses team

Live MPFT health records are accessible with a single click, enabling safeguarding nurses to join a strategy meeting at short notice fully prepared. Mental health history, recent appointments, ongoing risks, and care involvement are all visible in one view, giving local authority partners the evidence they need to act, and removing the follow-up chasing that previously made the process so time-consuming.

The impact has been immediate and significant across both organisations. At SCHT, a clinician contacted the team on the very first day of go-live to say AICP had already made a difference, a sentiment echoed by a second colleague the following day. In the words of their Safeguarding team: "AICP has transformed children's safeguarding."

By connecting both Rio systems, clinicians now have a richer, more complete picture of each patient's journey. This has reduced the risk of uninformed decisions, cut duplication of effort, and enabled more proactive, coordinated care for patients who rely on both Trusts.

The platform has also prompted a positive cultural shift. Clinicians are now thinking more carefully about how they document records, particularly around abbreviations and contextual clarity. The shared, more transparent environment has improved record quality across both organisations as a direct result.

The value of this approach has been externally validated. The Deputy Chief Nursing Information Officer for England visited SCHT and specifically praised the clarity with which patient information is presented within AICP, highlighting its relevance to the wider NHS. Alfie Evans, Nurse Specialist for Safeguarding at SCHT, agrees: "It's about getting the kids safeguarded as soon as possible - and it's ticked every box on that."

Both Trusts are committed to building on this partnership. Planned AICP enhancements, including user-driven feedback and intuitive filtering, will further strengthen cross-Trust visibility as the ambition grows towards a genuinely integrated care system, where patients experience seamless, informed care regardless of which organisation they are with.

The connected Rio-to-Rio model also provides a replicable blueprint for other neighbouring Trusts who want to break down information silos and improve patient outcomes. Both MPFT and SCHT are committed to sharing their learning openly, and to demonstrating that meaningful NHS partnership is not just a strategic ambition, but something that can be delivered in practice.

MPFT and SCHT have shown that breaking down information silos between Trusts is not just possible, it is already happening. If your organisation is looking to improve cross-boundary clinical visibility and deliver more joined-up care, we would love to show you how AICP can help.