GP Connect: Update Record

Update Record enables information about patient consultations outside of general practice to be shared directly with GP clinical IT systems.

Update Record allows authorised clinicians to update a patient's GP record with consultation information. It is designed to make the management of consultations outside of general practice easier, faster and safer by removing the need to manually send and transcribe information via email.

Messages between clinical IT systems in GP practices and other care settings are ‘structured’. This means they transfer into the GP IT system in a consistent and standardised way that can be ‘read’ and easily filed in the patient record.

The system is nationally assured as being safe, secure and meeting appropriate standards for sharing clinical information.

The system will be rolled out incrementally from March 2024. Initially, it will support community pharmacies to share information with GP practices about consultations performed under the Pharmacy First (minor illness and clinical pathways), Hypertension Case Finding and Pharmacy Contraception services. In the future, this will expand to include updates for urgent supply of medicines.

Benefits of Update Record

Saves time on administrative duties

GP practice and community pharmacy staff will spend less time manually sending and transcribing information by email.

Shares information faster

When GP records are updated more promptly, health and care professionals in other care settings have faster access to information in the Summary Care Record, and patients have faster access via patient facing services such as the NHS App.

Helps prevent antimicrobial resistance

As part of the Pharmacy First scheme, pharmacists can provide antimicrobials for a limited number of clinical conditions. Update Record ensures that information about supply of medicines is added to the patient record as quickly as possible and can then be viewed by other healthcare professionals. This can prevent duplicate or over supply of antimicrobials.

Information for community pharmacy staff

You do not need to take any action to implement Update Record in your clinical IT system and you will not notice any changes to the user interface. You should continue to record and submit consultation information into your clinical IT system in the usual way.

Urgent messages to GP practices

Update Record is designed to send routine consultation information to GP practices only.

You should continue to use your existing communication methods with GP practices to send urgent messages or request an action to be taken for a patient.

Visibility of consultation information in patient records

You should work on the basis that when a consultation record is submitted, the information is visible to patients and their proxy users via patient facing services such as the NHS App. Proxy users can be anyone who has been given access to view someone else's medical record, such as a parent or carer.

Pharmacy Contraception Service

When providing this service, there may be a safeguarding concern or another reason why a patient may not want their consultation details visible via patient facing services or on their Summary Care Record. For example, where a person under 16 years old is receiving contraception services and may not want others to see this information.

In these cases, you should take extra care to capture in the consultation record that the patient does not consent to their information being shared with the GP.

Message failures

On occasion, consultation information may fail to send via Update Record. When this happens, your IT system supplier should notify you of the failure and you should resend the message via NHSmail following your supplier’s guidance.

Data controller responsibilities for pharmacies

Your responsibilities as the data controller have not changed. The same duties of transparency apply as before and users should be aware that the data is being shared under the legal basis of implied consent for direct care.

Information for GP practice staff

Your IT system supplier will contact you directly and tell you when Update Record will be enabled in your practice.

Once enabled, consultation information from community pharmacies will be sent straight into your GP IT system in a standardised format. You can choose to have the information automatically filed into the patient record or set the system so that a staff member must review it before filing by clicking a button.

You should continue to monitor NHSmail for consultation information for services that are not currently covered by Update Record.

Urgent messages from community pharmacies

Update Record is designed to send routine consultation information to GP practices only.

Community pharmacy staff are expected to use existing communication methods to contact your practice for anything urgent or requiring timely action.

Delaying your start date

Update Record will be enabled on the go-live date given to you by your IT system supplier. You can choose to temporarily disable it for up to 3 months if your practice needs more time to prepare for the changes.

Try to use Update Record in your practice as soon as possible. Delaying your start date will slow down the speed in which you receive consultation information from community pharmacies. It will also impact colleagues in community pharmacies, as they will need to continue to manually process and send consultation information to your practice.

At the end of the 3-month period, GP practices that still have Update Record disabled will be contacted by their system supplier and given a date when it will be automatically enabled in their practice. In this scenario Update Record will be set so that messages need to be accepted before they are filed into the patient record, but practices can switch to auto-filing if they prefer.

Visibility of consultation information in patient records

GP IT system suppliers manage the visibility of Update Record messages in patient records in different ways.

Some systems do not make the consultation information visible in Summary Care Record or through patient facing services (such as the NHS App) until a staff member has filed the messages, and for others it is visible as soon as it has been submitted. Your GP IT system supplier user guide will provide more detail.

Data controller responsibilities for GP practices

There is no change to the data controllership responsibilities of GP practices. The content of consultation messages is the responsibility of the community pharmacy as data controller and is managed through implied consent for direct care. Pharmacies have been provided with the appropriate transparency information to fulfil their duties.

For technical integration details, see GP Connect Update Record.

Last edited: 22 April 2024 9:46 am