Summary Care Record Background
The Summary Care Record (SCR) project is primarily about patient safety and offers a real chance
to improve clinical care while providing important safeguards around consent and confidentiality. The
SCR makes a selection of information available to clinicians working in emergency situations 24
hours a day, 365 days a year, thus allowing them to have this basic information to hand when they
are making decisions on how best to treat their patients.
What’s Information is shared in the SCR
The SCR contains essential information derived from the GP system about patient’s which includes
medication (12 months for acutes, 18 months for repeats) and their allergies and any bad reactions
they have had to medication in the past.
What is the Patient Information Programme (PIP)?
The purpose of the PIP phase is to inform patients of the benefits of the SCR and of their choices.
The PIP lasts for a statutory 12 weeks and all your patients aged 16 and over will be sent an SCR
information pack, including an opt out form.
How will the PIP be coordinated?
To support PIP, the national team for a limited time only have offered to subsidise the costs of writing
out to patients which involves:-
Practice Agrees to
participate with SCR by
30th August
Mailhouse receive opt out
forms, sort out by practice
and arrange for secure
delivery to practices every
2 weeks
Patient information
extracted from Exeter / list
produced for Out of
County patients
Patient Information
Progamme (mailout)
commences for 12 weeks
through a Mailhouse
w/c 2nd September
w/c 13th September
Practice to code onto
patient record opt out
code
Any new patients
registering with practice
offered chance to opt out
This project will be supported by Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (GEM
CSU) and Leicestershire Health Informatics Service (LHIS) and has been designed to create
little additional workload for the practices in either the current Patient Information Programme
(PIP) phase or after in on-going ‘Business as Usual’. We will endeavour to keep the workload for
practices during the PIP to a minimum, and the feedback from practices currently engaged in the
project indicates the activity required during the PIP is really very little. Practices have reported only
a limited number of queries from patients, (some have reported no enquiries at all) and no
detrimental impact on everyday practice business activity.
Patient Information Extraction
For the PIP to be undertaken the mailhouse will require a list of patients to be written to from
practices which will be obtained through the following routes:

For patients registered with Leicestershire information will be extracted from the Exeter System
For patients who are cross border / out of county patients GEM CSU will work with the practice
to produce a list of the information required.
Mailhouse Responsibilities
The SCR programme has been supported by the Health and Social Care Information Centre nationally
and we will be using the mailhouse they have recommended.
The mailhouse will be responsible for creating the letters, putting items into the envelopes and
postage.
Opt Out Forms
The mailhouse will receive the opt out forms on behalf of the practices, they sort them out by practice
and then send them to the practices by secure delivery on a fortnightly basis during the PIP.
Each envelope has a barcode on it which identifies which practice the opt out form needs to be sent
to. This process is in place to protect patient confidentiality; the mailhouse will not be looking at which
patients have opted out.
In addition to this patients can put their opt out request in writing to the practice.
What do we do when Opt Out Forms are received?
All patient opt out requests received by the practice will need to be recorded on your clinical system (the
national opt out rate is currently approx. 1.6%). This is a simple process and only requires a single read
code to be added to the records of those patients who have expressed a desire to opt out, please note
that nothing is added to the rest of your patient’s record.
There is no strict timetable for when this is done, although we would advise that you code your
patients opting out when you receive either their forms or letters as this exercise needs to be
completed before your patients’ records are uploaded.
What about new patients registering with the practice after PIP has started
Any patients over the age of 16 registering with the practice after your patient list has been extracted for
the PIP should be offered the opportunity to opt out of SCR. This will need to be included as part of your
‘business as usual’ registration process. Practices will be provided with SCR information which can be
added to you normal ‘welcome pack’.
If these patients choose to opt out you will need to read code their record in the same way as above.
What happens to patients whose mail is returned
This will be part of your standard FP69 process and comes to you as messages through the practice
links.
How do we manage queries from patients?
The majority of patient queries will be handled by the NHS Care Records Service which has a
dedicated SCR help line, the Leicestershire Customer Service Team and the SCR Project staff. As
previously stated many practices already engaged in the project have reported little to no enquiries.
What does the practice need to do now?
The next step for practices is to confirm that they wish to participate with SCR and nominate an SCR
lead
Please provide this information to Jennie Caukwell (jennie.caukwell@westleicestershire.ccg.nhs.uk)
by the 30th August 2013.
What does the SCR lead do?
This person will be responsible for cascading the guidance material within the practice and ensuring
relevant practice staff understands their responsibilities.
The SCR project manager will use this lead as the main point of contact and will arrange SCR Concept
and Business Change training with them to ensure practice staff have the required knowledge and
information to deal with any enquiries.
What will happen if the practice does not wish to take part?
For any practices who feel they don’t wish to take part we will need to understand your reasons for this. If
you did wish to take this forward at a later stage then this will be the responsibility of the practice to
manage the process and fund the costs of the mail out. Please note that this could be costly for the
practice as the opt out process has to be free for patients.