Summary Care Record

What is a Summary Care Record (SCR)?

Your Summary Care Record is an electronic summary of key information from your GP medical record. If you need healthcare away from your usual doctor’s surgery, your SCR will provide those looking after you with this information to help them give you better and quicker care.

This can be especially useful:

• in an emergency
• when you are on holiday
• when your surgery is closed
• at out-patient clinics
• when you visit a pharmacy

Summary Care Record – your 3 options:

You can choose how much information is shared through your Summary Care Record. You are much more likely to reap the benefits of SCR if you choose the enhanced version (option 2).

You can choose to have a ‘core’ Summary Care Record

All patients, unless they have opted out, have a ‘core’ Summary Care Record including basic information about their current medications, allergies, and bad reactions they have had to medicines.

You can choose to have an ‘enhanced’ Summary Care Record

This means your record will contain the ‘core’ information plus extra information that you think would be helpful for the healthcare staff who treat you. You must give your explicit consent for this.

That extra information could include:

• Information about your long term health conditions – such as asthma, diabetes, heart problems or rare medical conditions.
• Your relevant medical history – clinical procedures that you have had, why you need a particular medicine, the care you are currently receiving and clinical advice to support your future care.
• Your healthcare needs and personal preferences – you may have particular communication needs, a long term condition that needs to be managed in a particular way, or you may have made legal decisions or have preferences about your care that you would like to be known.
• Immunisation information – details of previous vaccinations, such as tetanus and routine childhood jabs.

You can choose not to have a Summary Care Record.

Information from your GP record concerning your current medications, allergies and bad reactions to medicines will not be readily available to other services treating you. Fewer than 5% of patients have chosen to opt out.

For more information, or to request an enhanced Summary Care Record, please talk to the staff at your GP practice. You can change your mind about what information you share at any time.

How will having a Summary Care Record help me?

Essential details about your healthcare can be very difficult to remember, particularly when you are unwell. Having an enhanced Summary Care Record means that healthcare professionals treating you will be better informed about you, which will increase the quality of your care.

You may already have seen the benefits of having a core Summary Care Record. One common benefit is when a patient is admitted to hospital and the Clinician treating them is able to see they are allergic to a particular medication and so prescribe an alternative.

How will my information be kept safe?

Your Summary Care Record can only be viewed by authorised staff who have an NHS smartcard with a chip and PIN. They must also ask for your consent to view your Summary Care Record, unless you are unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate and they believe that accessing your record is in your best interest. All access to your Summary Care record is documented and audited by the Privacy Officer of the organisation to ensure it is appropriate.

An enhanced Summary Care Record is not a copy of your whole record. Sensitive information such as fertility treatments, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy terminations or gender reassignment will not be included, unless you specifically ask for it to be.