Suspended Record Continuity

A patient’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) is suspended when the patient is removed from their GP practice, and they do not register with a new one.  This can happen for many reasons such as: 

• a change to the catchment area of the GP practice 
• a patient leaving the practice but not registering with a new one 
• the patient moves abroad

Previously, when the patient’s EHR became suspended, it was printed by their previous practice and transported to Primary Care Support England (PCSE). PCSE stored and managed the paper record until the patient registered with a new practice. 

The Suspended Record Continuity (SRC) service stores and transfers these records digitally. It changes the digital tags attached to the patient’s EHR so that it is recognised as suspended. The EHR remains with the previous practice until the patient registers elsewhere.  

When the patient later registers with a new practice, the record can be easily identified and transferred using GP2GP.  The new practice receives the EHR in the form of a GP2GP message and the patient's record is removed from storage.

This service is for healthcare professionals and administrators working in GP practices, who need to remove and receive patient Electronic Health Records (EHRs).

This service is mandated for use by all GP practices in England.

Examples of use include:

• a GP administrator accessing the EHR of a new patient
• a clinician accessing a new patient's EHR record to support clinical decision making 

1. When a patient is removed from a practice, a National Event Management Service (NEMS) update is triggered.
2. The SRC service updates the patient’s EHR to remove the GP Organisation Data Service (ODS) code and replace it with a Managing Organisation Field (MOF) on the Patient Demographic Service (PDS). The record is still held at the patient’s previous practice.
3. When the patient later registers with a new GP practice, the service automatically transfers their EHR to the new practice using GP2GP.

This service is live and has been in active use since July 2022.

There is no user interface for this service. This is a backend service which is activated when a practice removes a patient’s EHR. 

The following table shows how to contact us about this service.

The following services are related to SRC.