Patient Record

Sharing Your Medical Record

Increasingly, patient medical data is shared e.g. between GP surgeries and District Nursing, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when attending patients.

The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand. Patients must consent to sharing of the data held by a health provider out to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data.

e.g. it may be necessary to share data held in GP practices with district nurses but the local podiatry department would not need to see it to undertake their work. In this case, patients would allow the surgery to share their data, they would allow the district nurses to access it but they would not allow access by the podiatry department. In this way access to patient data is under patients' control and can be shared on a 'need to know' basis.

Summary Care Record

There is a Central NHS Computer System called the Summary Care Record (SCR) The Summary Care Record is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. It will contain information on your medications and allergies.

Your information will be extracted from practices such as ours and held securely on central NHS databases.   

As with all systems there are pros and cons to think about. When you speak to an emergency doctor you might overlook something that is important and if they have access to your medical record it might avoid mistakes or problems, although even then, you should be asked to give your consent each time a member of NHS Staff wishes to access your record, unless you are medically unable to do so.

On the other hand, you may have strong views about sharing your personal information and wish to keep your information at the level of this practice.  If you do not wish information about you to be uploaded onto the NHS spine you will need to set your national data opt-out choice online.  An alternative provision will be made for those patients who are unable to or do not want to use the online system.

The national data opt-out programme will afford patients the opportunity to make an informed choice about whether they wish their confidential patient information to be used just for their individual care and treatment or also used for research and planning purposes.


A wider range of health and care professionals in south west London such as GPs, hospital doctors and social care workers, will now be able to see important health info about you, helping them to make the best decisions regarding your care.

More info: www.swlondon.nhs.uk/connectingyourcare

Connecting your Care brings together health and care services across south west London, to improve the way information about you is shared. This means it is quickly and safely available to the health and care professionals who need to see it, to make better and quicker decisions about your care and treatment.

Some services in south west London, such as hospitals and GP practices, have been sharing information in this way since 2019. From September 2020, even more organisations across south west London will be permanently adopting this way of sharing information.

For more including the full benefits of Connecting your Care and the type of information which can be shared visit:

http://www.swlondon.nhs.uk/connectingyourcare