GP Records Access in NHS England

Published: 03/04/25

Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS) welcomes the recent development in England of community pharmacist access to patient GP record data on medications, investigations and observations. 
Whilst positive developments have been made in Scotland, including access to the Emergency Care Summary and the use of Clinical Portal in various Health Boards, CPS has long campaigned for a ‘once for Scotland’ approach. Equitable access to relevant clinical information will support optimum delivery of services and patient care.

ECS enables pharmacists to access a patient’s prescribing history when required, however this information does not give a complete picture of a patient’s medical history and can affect the pharmacist’s ability to make confident decisions, potentially impacting the patient journey.

The implementation of a version of Clinical Portal that enables records access as well as the input of community pharmacy interventions has been very successful in supporting prescribers in NHS Tayside – we would advocate for the spread of this model across the rest of Scotland. Only by giving our teams the tools they need to support their communities can we truly reform how NHS services are delivered.

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