Summary Care Record supplementary transparency notice

This notice describes how NHS Digital, GPs and other health and social care organisations may use your information within the health and social care system to protect you and others with regard to your Summary Care Record.

All patients registered with a GP have a Summary Care Record, unless they have chosen not to have one. The information held in your Summary Care Record gives registered and regulated healthcare professionals, away from your usual GP practice, access to information to provide you with safer care, reduce the risk of prescribing errors and improve your patient experience.

Your Summary Care Record contains basic (Core) information about allergies and medications and any reactions that you have had to medication in the past.

Some patients, including many with long term health conditions, previously have agreed to have Additional Information shared as part of their Summary Care Record. This Additional Information includes information about significant medical history (past and present), reasons for medications, care plan information and immunisations.

During the pandemic, the Department of Health and Social Care removed the requirement for a patient’s prior explicit consent to share Additional Information as part of the Summary Care Record.

This is because the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care issued a legal notice to healthcare bodies requiring them to share confidential patient information with other healthcare bodies where this is required to diagnose, control and prevent the spread of the virus and manage the pandemic. This included sharing Additional Information through Summary Care Records, unless a patient objected to this.

If you have already expressed a preference to only have Core information shared in your Summary Care Record, or to opt-out completely of having a Summary Care Record, these preferences will continue to be respected and this change will not apply to you. For everyone else, the Summary Care Record will be updated to include the Additional Information.

This change will be continued after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic period.

In order to look after your health and care needs, health and social care bodies may share your confidential patient information contained in your Summary Care Record with clinical and non-clinical staff in other health and care organisations, for example hospitals, NHS 111 and out of hours organisations. These changes will improve the healthcare that you receive away from your usual GP practice.

Regardless of your past decisions about your Summary Care Record preferences, you will still have the same options that you currently have in place to opt out of having a Summary Care Record, including the opportunity to opt-back in to having a Summary Care Record or opt back in to allow sharing of Additional Information.

You can exercise these choices by doing the following:

1. Choose to have a Summary Care Record with all information shared. This means that any authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals will be able to see a detailed Summary Care Record, including Core and Additional Information, if they need to provide you with direct care.
2. Choose to have a Summary Care Record with Core information only. This means that any authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals will be able to see limited information about allergies and medications in your Summary Care Record if they need to provide you with direct care.
3. Choose to opt-out of having a Summary Care Record altogether. This means that you do not want any information shared with other authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals involved in your direct care. You will not be able to change this preference at the time if you require direct care away from your GP practice. This means that no authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals will be able to see information held in your GP records if they need to provide you with direct care, including in an emergency.

To make these changes, you should inform your GP practice or complete this form and return it to your GP practice.

During the height of the pandemic changes were made to the Summary Care Record (SCR) to make additional patient information available to all appropriate clinicians when and where they needed it, to support direct patients care, leading to improvements in both care and outcomes.

These changes to the SCR will remain in place, unless you decide otherwise.

Regardless of your past decisions about your Summary Care Record preferences, you will still have the same options that you currently have in place to opt out of having a Summary Care Record, including the opportunity to opt-back in to having a Summary Care Record or opt back in to allow sharing of Additional Information.

You can exercise these choices by doing the following:

1. Choose to have a Summary Care Record with all information shared. This means that any authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals will be able to see a detailed Summary Care Record, including Core and Additional Information, if they need to provide you with direct care.
2. Choose to have a Summary Care Record with Core information only. This means that any authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals will be able to see limited information about allergies and medications in your Summary Care Record if they need to provide you with direct care.
3. Choose to opt-out of having a Summary Care Record altogether. This means that you do not want any information shared with other authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals involved in your direct care. You will not be able to change this preference at the time if you require direct care away from your GP practice. This means that no authorised, registered and regulated health and care professionals will be able to see information held in your GP records if they need to provide you with direct care, including in an emergency.

To make these changes, you should inform your GP practice or complete this form and return it to your GP practice.

Legal basis for sharing this data

In order for your Personal Data to be shared or processed, an appropriate 'legal basis' needs to be in place and recorded. The legal bases for direct care via SCR is the same as the legal bases for the care you would receive from your own GP, or another healthcare provider:

• for the processing of personal data: Article 6.1 (e) of the UK GDPR: 'processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller'.
• for the processing of 'Special Category Data' (which includes your medical information): Article 9.2 (h) of the UK GDPR:  'processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services'.

Your rights

Because the legal bases used for your care via SCR are the same as used in other direct care situations, the legal rights you have over this data under UK GDPR will also be the same- these are listed elsewhere in our privacy notice.

Find out more about SCR.

For more information about these changes see the following resources:

• press release on better information sharing for doctors and nurses during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
• Summary Care Records
• Summary Care Records for patients including additional information

For more information about how NHS Digital uses your information, and what choices and rights you have, see How we look after your health and care information, our General transparency notice, our Summary Care Record transparency notice and our coronavirus (COVID-19) response transparency notice.

This notice may be amended at any time, so please review it frequently. The date at the top of this page will be amended each time this notice is updated.