Summary care records
Summary Care Records are designed to improve the safety and quality of patient care.
The Summary Care Record is an electronic record which will give healthcare staff faster, easier access to essential information about you, to help provide you with safe treatment when you need care in an emergency or when your GP practice is closed.
For more information visit the NHS website.
About your Summary Care Record
If you decide to have a Summary Care Record it will contain important information about any medicines you are taking, allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines that you have had. Giving healthcare staff access to this information can prevent mistakes being made when caring for you in an emergency or when your GP practice is closed.
You may want to add other details about your care to your Summary Care Record. This will only happen if you ask for the information to be included. You should discuss your wishes with the healthcare staff treating you.
Healthcare staff will ask your permission every time they need to look at your Summary Care Record. If they cannot ask you, for example if you are unconscious, they may look at your record without asking you. If they have to do this, they will make a note on your record.
How will I benefit from having a Summary Care Record?
Healthcare staff will have quicker access to information about any medicines you are taking,allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had.
This means they can provide you with safer care during an emergency, when your GP practice is closed, or when you are away from home in another part of England.
Children and the Summary Care Record
Children will automatically have a Summary Care Record made for them.
If you do not want your child to have a Summary Care Record you will need to download and fill in an opt out form on behalf of your child and return it to the practice. Ask at the practice for a paper copy if you prefer.
In some circumstances your GP may feel it is in your child’s best interests to have a Summary Care Record. For example, if your child has a serious allergy that healthcare staff treating your child should know about.
You can change your mind at any time
If you choose not to have a Summary Care Record but then change your mind later we can still make one for you. You need to let us know.
If you choose not to have your Summary Care Record after we have made it, you need to tell us. We will make sure that healthcare staff who try to look at your Summary Care Record will not be able to. We will only make your record available again if whoever wants to see it asks in writing and an investigation has found it necessary, for example if there is a complaint.
You can ask to have your record deleted, but that may not be possible if the record has already been used to give you care.
Whatever you decide, we will provide you with the best possible care.
What do I do now?
You can choose to have a Summary Care Record: You do not need to do anything. This will happen automatically.
You can choose not to have a Summary Care Record: You need to let us know by downloading, filling in and returning an opt out form to us.
Alternatively you can get an op-out form from the surgery, or you can ask the NHS to send you one by phoning the Summary Care Record Information Line on 0300 123 3020.
Page updated: 6 July, 2017