England GPs and Hospitals Required to Share Data for Single Patient Records

GPs and hospitals in England will be required to share patient data under legislation to be announced in the King’s Speech on Wednesday. The legislation will create a single patient record for each person that can be used across all healthcare providers.

It forms part of a £10bn digitisation of the health service. Officials said making the data accessible in one place would save lives. They added that the change would spare patients from repeatedly having to provide their medical history when attending hospital or being discharged back to their GP.

Paramedics attending heart attack and stroke patients currently cannot see full medical records in many cases. Hospitals often lack access to a patient’s complete history beyond current medicines and known allergies. GPs must wait for emailed letters from consultants to learn what happened during a hospital visit.

The single patient records will be available to clinicians in parts of the NHS as early as next year, including for maternity and frailty care. The Department of Health and Social Care confirmed the timeline. The legislation will also form part of a health bill that will scrap NHS England by 2027.

Officials stated that patients would receive safer, quicker and more accurate healthcare as the records join up fragmented information from around the country. Patients would gain more control and transparency with clear safeguards, audit trails and choice over how their data is used.

For clinicians, the system would remove the need to work with missing information or search in multiple places. The upcoming legislation would enable information related to a patient’s health and care to be processed for the purposes of establishing and operating the single patient records.

Officials said it would be robust against the threat of data breaches. Public and healthcare professionals would be consulted throughout its design. A national chief clinical information officer at NHS England said the records would revolutionise patient care across the country.

GPs are currently the data controllers for their patients’ records. The legislation will shift responsibility and ownership of the data and force the sharing of information. GP leaders have expressed concern about liability for data errors introduced by other providers.

They warned that without statutory clarity and indemnity, data sharing could be slowed rather than accelerated. The British Medical Association has previously called for doctors to remain in control of GP data in the single patient record rather than the Department of Health and Social Care.

Its GP committee has warned that any move to take control of data away from GPs will damage trust and risk confidentiality. The NHS Alliance, which represents hospitals and NHS leaders, said a single patient record could make the NHS work better and help different services join up more smoothly.

It added that the record has the potential to give patients more control over their own care. The group called for the bill to spell out clearly who is responsible for patient data when it is used to deliver care and when it is used for other purposes such as research.

This includes being explicit about who controls which data, who is legally responsible if things go wrong, what data can be used for, and what patients should be told.