Summary Care Record application (SCRa) coronavirus vaccination information

We've updated one of our systems, the Summary Care Record application (SCRa), to provide essential information about a patient's coronavirus vaccination history, so health and care professionals can make a more informed decision about the direct care they provide to people during the pandemic.

The service will help clinicians providing direct care to patients, who might not have a GP medical record or a Summary Care Record with Additional Information. It will also support clinicians whose systems do not include coronavirus vaccination event information. 

A new COVID-19 Vaccination tab is available to clinicians using the SCRa, and the 1-Click Service, following a recent development supported by senior clinical leads from both NHS England and NHS Digital and in consultation with frontline clinicians. This will provide the broadest possible nationally available mechanism to present coronavirus vaccination events.

SCRa and the 1-Click Service are available across a wide range of care settings, providing scheduled and unplanned care, where they have chosen to use the application. The SCRa will provide clinicians with an additional way of determining a patient’s coronavirus vaccination history. This may be particularly important when planning ongoing care, or responding to symptoms or changes to a patient’s health, which may be linked to coronavirus or a possible adverse drug reaction to a coronavirus vaccine. 

The new tab includes whether a patient has received first, second and/or booster doses of a coronavirus vaccination. This information may support you to manage the patient but should not be used in isolation. Patient management decisions should always be made drawing on the widest range of information sources available. 

The information is currently updated overnight via the Data Processing Service. Booster doses are being loaded into SCRa in due course.

This information along with healthcare information from other sources, such as a patient’s previous testing history and clinical information, will support you to decide how you provide services and treat your patients during the pandemic. 

Each time a patient’s record is opened by a clinical user, a COVID-19 Vaccination tab will be available if an individual has received first, second and/or booster doses of a coronavirus vaccination. The tab will be available on the same row as the Key Demographic Information tab. If a patient is yet to receive a coronavirus vaccination, then no tab will be visible.

It’s anticipated that there will be a delay between a patient receiving a coronavirus vaccination and information about this vaccination event being available on the COVID-19 Vaccination tab in SCRa. This delay is likely to be up to 48 hours but could be longer in some cases.

Adverse reactions that have occurred within 15 minutes of the vaccination event and have been recorded will be displayed on the COVID-19 Vaccinations tab. Information about adverse reactions occurring later than 15 minutes after the vaccination event will not be displayed in the COVID-19 Vaccinations tab but may have been recorded separately and be available in other shared care records. 

Healthcare professionals who already have access to the SCR (clinical users) will have access to this new tab and the information within it for an individual by default.

It will also support clinicians to report Yellow Card issues to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on suspected side effects. 

The COVID-19 Vaccinations tab will always display the following disclaimer message:

The image above provides a typical example of the coronavirus vaccine information in SCRa. By clicking on the More/Less information expander, more or less vaccination event information will be displayed.

The following image provides a closer look at a typical example of the coronavirus first dose information:

The following image provides an example of the coronavirus vaccine information within an electronic record system which incorporates the 1-Click Service solution.

Once the user selects to view the SCR the following child window appears:

The tables below describe the information that will populate the “COVID-19 Vaccination” tab in SCRa and the 1-Click Service. Where a data item is not supplied, “Not Recorded” will be displayed in the relevant table row.

Adverse reactions

The record of an adverse reaction consists of eight data items which will be displayed only if an adverse reaction has been observed within 15 minutes of administering the vaccine and been recorded. These items will be grouped together and suffixed with a number (such as “Onset (1)”) to make the display of multiple adverse reactions clearer.
 

More information

Additional information about the vaccine that has been administered can be revealed by expanding the “More Information” section.

On rare occasions, a patient may have had multiple vaccination events recorded for the same dose or the doses may have been recorded in an unexpected order. These are due to errors in the data recorded by the organisation(s) administering the coronavirus vaccination(s). The order of the dose(s) is determined by date and time, with the oldest displayed first. Any associated adverse reaction(s) will accompany the vaccination event information. 

Where data quality issues are identified in the information presented within the COVID-19 Vaccinations tab, then a warning message will be displayed:

The National Care Records Service pilot product will not be progressed at this time to include the COVID-19 Vaccination tab, due to wider COVID-19 priorities.

SCRa is a web-based application which allows health and care professionals to view clinical and demographic information, using a number of other services. They include the Personal Demographic Service, Child Protection – Information Sharing , Female Genital Mutilation – Information Sharing and Overseas Visitors and Migrants.

SCRa also provides a way to view a patient’s Summary Care Record (SCR), which is an electronic record of important patient information, created from GP medical records only. It can be seen and used by authorised staff in areas of the health and care system involved in the patient's direct care. A patient can choose to opt for a core SCR (allergies and medications only), a SCR including Additional Information or opt-out entirely. If a patient has chosen none of the above then they will have a SCR containing Additional Information by default.

The 1-Click Service is intended to be a simpler and less resource intensive way to enable SCR viewing into local applications. This solution allows a user of an application to click and launch the SCRa in a separate window for a specific patient, without separately searching for the patient’s demographic details again. This requires less development effort on behalf of the local organisation/supplier since many of the functional requirements are already met by SCRa. This solution also results in a more continuous user experience.

Providing your coronavirus vaccination event information to authorised health and care professionals will help them to provide you with better care. This information is also available to support patients who are not registered with a GP or have chosen not to have a Summary Care Record (SCR) or an SCR with Additional Information. 

Find out more information for patients.

The coronavirus vaccination event data is collected at the point of vaccination, for example, at your local vaccination centre.

The information flows regularly from the suppliers and into the NHS Digital Data Processing Service (DPS). In addition, the information flows to the patient’s GP record and can then flow onwards into the patient’s SCR, following existing processing.

It's anticipated that there will be a delay between a patient receiving a coronavirus vaccination and information about this vaccination event being available on the COVID-19 Vaccination tab in SCRa. This delay is likely to be up to 48 hours but could be longer in some cases. 

Only clinicians with appropriate access rights will be able to access the COVID-19 Vaccinations tab and this should only be used to support them in providing direct care to patients.

Users will need a smartcard to access SCRa or the 1-Click Service and the following access rights (as a minimum) to view the SCR and the COVID-19 Vaccinations tab:

• Patient trace (B0264) - access SCR application (perform patient trace)
• SCR Clinical View (B0257) - view non-Electronic Transfer of Prescription (non-ETP) Clinical Data within Clinical Support Application (SCRa)
• SCR (B0085) - claim a relationship with a patient

This information is separate to that held in the Summary Care Record. The patients Permission to View will not be required to access this specific coronavirus vaccination event information in the COVID-19 vaccination tab, but Permission to View will continue to be required to access the patient’s Summary Care Record. 

Please use your current local helpdesk for SCRa related issues.

However, if required, a ticket can be raised via our National Service Desk (NSD) at [email protected] or by calling 0300 3035 035.