Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether it is his policy that interventions by (a) community pharmacists and (b) physiotherapists should be recorded on a single clinical record system.

Providing authorised health and care professionals with access to their patients’ records helps them to understand their patients’ needs, plan their care and make the best decisions with their patients. NHS England are working on improving the IT infrastructure across the health and care system, so that all relevant medical professionals, including physiotherapists and community pharmacists, can access a patient record where appropriate and necessary, to view their history and record any care they provide for other professionals involved in the patient’s care to see.

In the current delivery plan for recovering access to primary care, the Government announced that focused IT development will further support all services offered in community pharmacy. NHS England will work with community pharmacy and general practice IT suppliers to streamline referrals, provide additional access to relevant clinical information from the general practitioner (GP) record, and share structured updates quickly and efficiently following a pharmacy consultation back into the GP patient record.