Summary Care Records

We are making changes to the way patients' health records are kept and used. This is part of the NHS Care Records Service. This will help us to improve the safety and quality of the healthcare you receive.

What happens at the moment?

Today, records are kept in all the places where you receive care. The healthcare staff using your records can usually share information from your records only by letter, email, fax or phone. At times this can slow down treatment and sometimes information can be lost along the way. Now there will be quicker ways to get important information to the NHS staff treating you. This includes in an emergency and when you use out of hours services when your GP practice is closed.

What is going to happen?

Across England the NHS is gradually introducing Summary Care Records (SCR). Your SCR will include details of any allergies, your current prescriptions and whether you have had any bad reactions to medicines.

Once you have an SCR, NHS staff will ask you if they can look at it every time they need to. If you do not want us to make an SCR for you, you can choose not to have one.

What does this mean for us in Wakefield district?

In September 2009 we wrote to patients from 14 GP practices across the district. This covered approximately 100,000 patients. They were given detailed information about the summary care records. A copy of the leaflet is in the downloads section at the bottom of this page.