Patient Record

Sharing Your Medical Record

Increasingly, patient medical data is shared e.g. between GP surgeries and District Nursing, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when attending patients.

The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand. Patients must consent to sharing of the data held by a health provider out to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data.

e.g. it may be necessary to share data held in GP practices with District Nurses but the local podiatry department would not need to see it to undertake their work. In this case, patients would allow the surgery to share their data, they would allow the district nurses to access it but they would not allow access by the podiatry department. In this way access to patient data is under patients' control and can be shared on a 'need to know' basis.

 

Summary Care Records (SCR)

All patients have a Summary Care Record (SCR).

This contains important information about your health, such as:
• Medicines you take
• Allergies you have
• Medicines that make you ill

You might need to see a doctor or nurse who does not know you. If they do not know about your care, your SCR could:
• Stop them making a mistake, because they can see your medicines, allergies or what medicines make you ill
• Help them see your information straight away on a computer

Doctors and nurses treating you will ask if they can look at your SCR to help them treat you quickly and safely.

You can choose to have other useful information added to your SCR, including:
• Your illnesses and any health problems
• Operations and vaccinations you have had in the past
• How you would like to be treated – such as where you would prefer to receive care
• What support you might need
• Who should be contacted for more information about you

If you think you want to add other useful information to your SCR, talk to the surgery. It will be added to your SCR and kept up-to-date for you.
If there is information you don’t want adding, let us know.

If you are registered with a GP practice in England your SCR is created automatically, unless you have opted out. 98% of practices are now using the system. You can talk to your practice about opting out of including Additional Information to do with long-term conditions, care preferences or specific communications needs.

The Summary Care Record will only be accessed with permission from the patient.

 

Temporary Coronavirus Changes

Summary Care Records have temporarily been extended to allow additional information to be accessed due to the pandemic. To find further information on this temporary access please click here.

Online Access to Medical Records

Recent changes to online access to medical records means that all patients aged 16+ are able to view information added to their electronic GP record should they request to do so.

For patients who already have full online records access nothing will change; for patients who have 'core' online access - that is, the ability to request medication, make appointments etc - they can request to view their GP record including consultations, results, documents, free text etc.

For patients who do not currently have online access, this can be requested so whenever they do sign up to the NHS App they wil be able to view information added to their GP record.