NHS Summary Care Record
Increasingly we’re seeing third party providers requesting for digital or physical copies of patients’ summary care records (SCR). These are not the same as basic clinical summaries, which you can see yourself via the NHS app – the SCR is a digital system which is meant to be accessed directly by providers in a limited scope, as detailed below, for the purposes of direct care.
Accordingly, we do not provide copies of it to any third parties, on the basis that circulating confidential information in this way is not the intended purpose of the system, and is unsafe. Because it is not intended as a patient-viewable record either, we also don’t provide copies of it to patients, but you are welcome to a copy of your clinical summary from our system on request, or you can access this via the NHS app.
If a provider you’re seeing needs to access SCR information, they need to liaise with the NHS team responsible for the system, subject to the limitations below.
Approved care settings
The list of approved care settings on the NHS digital website, at the time of writing, excludes all provide providers and research settings. It also makes clear that organisations seeking access to the SCR should apply via the national team, using their online expression of interest form.
Legitimate relationship
Access to the SCR is dependent on the user being involved in your care; this is defined as a “legitimate relationship”. This also requires that:
- your explicit permission is obtained except in emergency situations
- this consent is recorded in the system used to access the record
- users have a smartcard and connection to a secure NHS network
- access is for a defined purpose and time period
- organisations accessing the SCR appoint a privacy officer who reviews SCR accesses to ensure they were legitimate
None of these requirements are in our view possible if we send out copies of the record.
Intended use
National guidance on the SCR as of 2025 makes clear that the GP role is to create/update the record using GP software, that the summary care record sits outside that GP software and is the responsibility of the national team, and that it should be accessed from other settings using digital tools. Note the word ‘must’ in the following reference: “SCR does not have a user interface – users must access it indirectly via user-facing applications”.
The guidance also mandates that access is via a secure network: “when viewing an SCR, the user must be using a machine logged in to the secure NHS network, using a smartcard with the appropriate Role Based Access Control codes set.”
Our view is that providing either physical or digital copies reduces the intrinsic security and auditability of a digital system, and accordingly we will not do so.
