NHS Care Records
The NHS in England is introducing the NHS Care Records Service to improve the safety and quality of patient care. It will give health-care staff faster, easier access to reliable information about you to help with your care.
Currently each NHS organisation responsible for your care keeps its own records about you and your treatment. This information is currently stored on a combination of paper-based and computer systems. You may have noticed that you can often be asked the same questions about your medications or your condition when you are at different NHS organisations for treatment, or even within the same place if you are at a different clinic or department.
NHS Bury is starting to create and later link up electronic records via a secure computer system. At first this will enable us to improve the sharing of information within NHS Bury and later with other organisations where you may receive care, such as hospitals and clinics. This will mean that the health-care staff treating you will be able to get a better understanding of your needs.
Your care records will be made up of two parts – a Summary Care Record and Detailed Care Records.
Detailed Care Records
Your Detailed Care Records will be available to NHS staff treating you and will contain the same sort of information that we currently hold about you. The difference is the way that the information is shared between NHS organisations.
Currently in NHS Bury we store some information on our computer system and other information in paper records. We are starting to record more information electronically to ensure that those staff who need to access a patient’s record are able to do so where and when it is needed.
Summary Care Records
In NHS Bury, over 130,000 patients already have a Summary Care Record. Your Summary Care Record will be available to NHS staff providing you with care anywhere in England. At first, they will contain important health information such as details of your allergies, current prescriptions and bad reactions to medicines. Full information about Summary Care Records in Bury, including participating practices, is available here.