Summary Care Record (SCR)
The NHS Summary Care Record (SCR) is an electronic summary of key clinical information (including medicines, allergies and adverse reactions) about a patient, sourced from the GP record. It is used by authorised healthcare professionals, with the patient’s consent, to support their care and treatment. Where a patient and their doctor wish to add additional information to the patient’s Summary Care Record, this may be added with the explicit consent of the patient.
More than 97% of the population have an SCR and it is already being successfully used in many settings across the NHS, such as A&E departments, hospital pharmacies, NHS 111 and GP out of hours services and walk in centres.
About Patient Summary Care Record from Patients Perspective
Patients Summary Care Record contains important information about any medicines they are taking, any allergies they suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines that they have previously experienced.
Allowing authorised healthcare professionals to have access to this information will improve decision making by doctors and other healthcare professionals and has prevented mistakes being made when patients are being cared for in different care settings.
The Summary Care Record also includes patient name, address, date of birth and your unique NHS Number to help identify patients correctly.
Patients may want to add other details about their care to your Summary Care Record. This will only happen if both the patient and their GP agree to do this. Patients should discuss their wishes for this with their GP practice.
Healthcare staff will have access to this information, so that they can provide safer care, whenever or wherever you need it, anywhere in England.
Who can see Summary Care Record?
Healthcare staff who have access to Summary Care Record:
- need to be directly involved in caring for the patient
- need to have an NHS Smartcard with a chip and passcode
- will only see the information they need to do their job and
- will have their details recorded every time they look at your record
Healthcare staff will ask for the patient permission every time they need to look at your Summary Care Record. If they cannot ask the patient (for example if they are unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate), healthcare staff may look at the record without asking the patient, because they consider that this is in the patients best interest.
If they have to do this, this decision will be recorded and checked to ensure that the access was appropriate.
Implementation of SCR
A number of organisations and people are involved with the implementation and technical oversight of the SCR.
NHS Digital
NHS Digital (formerly Health and Social Care Information Centre, HSCIC) manage the national infrastructure for a variety of NHS IT projects including the SCR.
NHS Digital has been commissioned by NHS England to lead on the implementation of SCR into community pharmacies. Rollout has now commenced, and is forecast to be complete by autumn 2017.
The SCR website address is http://systems.hscic.gov.uk/scr. General NHS Digital Contact Centre details are included here, whilst details for local implementation staff are here.
NHS IT Operating Model
NHS England are responsible for undertaking a range of tasks that support pharmacies in accessing and using national NHS IT applications.
The document, “Securing excellence in IT Services” sets out NHS organisational responsibilities in relation to IT. NHS England, through its local teams may either provide support functions itself or make arrangements for commissioning support units (CSUs) or any other IT provider to deliver them.
GP IT services will be managed by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) on behalf of NHS England. A CCG may choose to provide support functions to GP practices itself or make arrangements to commission support from CSUs or another IT provider – whilst it is possible that in some areas, NHS England and CCGs will commission the same CSU to provide SCR support for pharmacies and GPs respectively, this may not always be the case.
Arrangements for distribution of Smartcards
NHS England through its local teams is responsible for the issue of Smartcards and commissions local Registration Authorities (RAs) to carry out this function.
Contractors should report any concerns about the adequacy of local RA arrangements to LPCs. LPCs can escalate concerns to PSNC.
The NHS Digital central Smartcard team issue policy and guidance for use by the RAs.
Authorising payment of the one-off £200 SCR allowance
NHS England through its local teams will be responsible for authorisation of the SCR allowance (Drug Tariff Part VIA).
Support for Deployment
For contractors to be able to provide such a service to their patients and be able to have access to the SCR there are 4 steps to complete which are all mandatory. If all of these are not completed fully then they will not be able to be signed off for access. These steps are as follows;
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Complete your CPPE online Module and email a copy of your certificate to NHS SCR London Team.
- Book your mandatory community pharmacy SCR face-to-face training.
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Contact your local Registration Authority agent RA team to check they have all your details correct and updated. (See contact details for our area below)
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Complete your HSCIC User Agreement form.
Each contractor should have TWO Individuals that must undergo the 4 steps above;
Individual 1: SCR End User – pharmacist and/or level 3 registered technician that will be using SCR in the pharmacy
Individual 2: Privacy officer – superintendent pharmacist, pharmacist, owner, manager, technician, etc. can be non-clinical person and will be the person required to check and monitor SCR accesses from each pharmacy to ensure appropriate access and compliance with IG governance requirements.
Both the SCR End User and the Privacy Officer have to be 2 separate individuals in the pharmacy hence the title of User and Officer cannot be held by just one individual.
A Privacy Officer;
- Is required for every pharmacy implementing SCR
- If the Privacy Officer doesn’t have a smart card they will need to order one by contacting their RA and will then be able to attend the event, regardless of them being in receipt of one
- Will have access to the alerts that are created every time a SCR is accessed
- Is responsible for the quality assurance of the pharmacy
- Every pharmacy needs to have at least one privacy officer and role can be undertaken by non-clinical staff
- User of SCR system cannot be the same privacy officer as RA teams will not update the smart card if this is the case.
Summary Care Record (SCR) Face-to-Face Training
There are various training events organised all around London for the SCR face to face training. However these events are space limited and places are available on first come first served basis only. To view and register a space on a particular training event please click here.
You are required to provide your local RA (Registration Authority) with details of your privacy officer and a smartcard sponsor for your RA team to successfully update your smartcard access BEFORE YOU ATTEND THE FACE TO FACE TRAINING EVENT.
For contractors in our area of Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster the RA agent contact details are as follows; Tel; 0208 962 6591 Email: Registration.authority@nwlcsu.nhs.uk. We recommend getting in touch with them at least 1 week prior to your face to face training to make sure they have all your correct details.
Finally, If there are any queries for SCR event attendance process, contact the NHS SCR London Team via email; england.londonscr@nhs.net or tel; 0208 962 6591 and for any other further assistance do not hesitate your KCW LPC cell leads or email us at kcw.lpc@gmail.com.
Good Luck !!
