Access and store digital patient documents

Lloyd George records are historical paper-based records for GP patients that were used across the United Kingdom before GP records were digitised.

Many older patients still have Lloyd George records that contain information that was recorded prior to digitisation.

Some GP practices have local solutions for scanning and digitising Lloyd George records. Others still have the original paper records.

For further context see Digitisation of Lloyd George records. 

The National Document Repository (NDR) is a central place where digital patient documents can be accessed and stored by frontline services. 'Access and store digital patient documents' is the first service available within the NDR. It allows GP practices to access, view and download digital Lloyd George records. The Patient Record Management (PRM) team are responsible for delivering this service. 

It is our intention that the NDR will support other use cases such as:

• digitised Lloyd George records for the Ministry of Defence

• digitised Lloyd George records for the Ministry of Justice

• Access Request Fulfilment (ARF) - making records available to NHS England

• digital fall-back for GP2GP failures

• digital fall-back for ‘late letters’

• cross border paperless GP record transfers

We are currently rolling out the service to GP practices in the Birmingham and Solihull (BSOL) area. 

You can use this service if your practice is within the BSOL area and you need to view or download a patient record.  

If you are a practice outside of BSOL and a patient registers with you from a practice involved in the roll out, you can use this service to access and store their digital Lloyd George record. 

Eventually, the service will be available to all GP practices in England.

The service contains scanned and digitised Lloyd George records that have been uploaded by participating GP practices, or by their partner scanning suppliers.

In most cases, Lloyd George records only exist for older patients, but they can also exist for younger patients - this can happen if a patient moves practices and their records aren't transferred digitally for some reason.

For more details on which patients might have Lloyd George records, see Digitisation of Lloyd George records.

This service is currently being rolled out to the Birmingham and Solihull ICB.

It will eventually be strongly recommended for all GP practices in England.

Examples of use include:

• a clinician accessing a patient's digital Lloyd George record to support clinical decision making
• a GP administrator accessing a patient's digital Lloyd George record to fulfil an access request

For more details, see Benefits of Lloyd George digitisation to patients and practices.

For the initial roll out, the service works like this:

1. Upload records

Scanning suppliers work with GP practices to scan their Lloyd George records and upload them to our service via secure file transfer protocol (SFTP).

2. Access records

Healthcare workers, including clinicians and GP administrators, can:

1. Sign in to the service's user interface, using their NHS smartcard or other CIS2 authentication method
2. Search for a patient using their NHS number 
3. View the patient's Lloyd George record, if it exists.
4. Download a copy of the record.

This service is in beta. We are rolling out the service to GP practices in the Birmingham and Solihull (BSOL) area.

This is a bronze service, meaning it is available and supported during business hours 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday but not bank holidays.

There is a phased programme of roll out for this service.

Healthcare workers

To use the service to access digital Lloyd George records, contact us for access information.

 To access it you will need: 

• an NHS smartcard or other CIS2 authentication method
• the patient's NHS number 

Scanning suppliers

For the roll out, we are working with a single scanning supplier. In due course, we expect other scanning suppliers to be asked by their NHS customers to participate in the service. At that point we will provide the necessary technical and onboarding resources.

The PRM team hold regular Show and Tells. These events are for GP practice staff, ICBs and other interested groups, to keep them updated on changes to the service and the progress of the roll out. If you would like to join a Show and Tell, please contact the PRM team on [email protected].