Patient Prospective Access to your Full clinical Record Online
November 2023
We are aware that part of the NHS England Future Vision is for all patients to have immediate access to their notes from 1st November 2023. We agree that this aim is ultimately a positive step in patient autonomy and engagement in their own care, however there are significant risks associated with a blanket policy where all patients over 18 have immediate access to their future notes.
As of yet, we feel that these risks have not been resolved and after advice from our governing bodies and discussion with our fellow PCN practices we have therefore made the decision that the safest way forward is to adopt an Opt In model of access.
The aim of this is to allow patients access in a systematic manner which allows us to review notes before release and protect potentially vulnerable patients.
Access to prospective notes can be granted by requesting access via your application (Airmid, NHS APP, practice website etc). We will then send you a declaration form to complete either via SMS or Email.
I am sure that you all understand that clinical care will take priority over notes review, and this process may therefore take some time for access to be granted after request.
This process does not fall under the Subject Access Request for retrospective information access which has its own time frames for completion.
Not all requests for access may be considered safe and can be refused if it is felt access could be harmful such as patients who have active safeguarding concerns recorded. A routine appointment can be made to discuss these decisions.
We are not currently granting access to online Full Medical records for children under the age of 16 years to their parents or legal guardians by proxy access. We do however grant access for Medication ordering and Appointment booking. This does not affect you rights to access medical records of you children under a SAR (subject access request).
Children age 16-18 years will need to request access to their own records.
Proxy access (relatives/carers who have online access on your behalf with your permission) has not changed and will still be restricted to medication ordering and booking appointments.
We ask that you do not call the surgery to discuss prospective online access as we need to keep the lines clear for clinical queries. See the FAQ’s section for further information.
If you wish access to be blocked, please email, or write to us.
If you have other questions about access, please send these via email or letter.
FAQs
This means that you will be able to see notes from your appointments, as well as test results and any letters that are saved on your records. You will only be able to see information from when you register at the Practice or from the date of request onwards. Retrospective access has not been activated yet. You may be able to view some backdated information such as test results and vaccinations if you already have Detailed coded access, this will not change.
We are aware that many patients already have real time access to their investigation results via the NHS App. We would like to remind all patients that they may subsequently receive their results BEFORE they have been reviewed by the requesting clinician. This is completely outside of our control and is a system that has been set up by NHS England without consultation with us. Whilst we endeavour to ensure all abnormal results are reviewed as quickly as possible, there may occasionally be an unavoidable delay in this.
Some results may be marked as abnormal by the lab as they fall outside the reference ranges but this does not mean that they automatically require any action and it is up to the clinician to decide if these abnormalities are significant or not.
Please do not call the practice to discuss blood results as soon as you receive them as these calls block the phone lines and take up unnecessary receptionist and clinician time and takes us away from acute patient care.
If the GP needs to they will contact you and offer a review appointment.
Patients going on holiday does NOT increase the clinical urgency and whilst we try take into account social & medical commitments affecting patients, we cannot guarantee that queries will be dealt with quicker because you have other commitments or are anxious about the results.
You will only be able to see records from the new practice from the date your registration is completed. Records from the previous practice(s) will not be available.
You will need to re-request access via your application (NHS App/ RHA App/ practice website etc) as there is a declaration, we need you to complete.
Contact the practice via email or telephone, this will be passed onto your usual GP to review. Please be aware that historic entries of conditions you no longer have but did once have in the past cannot be removed. e.g., childhood asthma
Please contact the practice immediately so we can resolve this error and inform both parties involved.
The NHS website has a full list of commonly used abbreviations in General practice take a look https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-app/nhs-app-help-and-support/health-records-in-the-nhs-app/abbreviations-commonly-found-in-medical-records/
Please be aware that GP’s and specialists will most often use codes for diagnoses which are technical and not layman’s terminology. For instance, you may know you have cataracts but your record says Nuclear sclerosis. This is the correct medical terminology for cataracts. Or another common example may be sun damaged skin the medical terminology of which is actinic keratoses. You can use the search function in the NHS website to look these up https://www.nhs.uk/