Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce barriers to the sharing of medical records between NHS trusts in cases when those trusts are treating the same patients.

Appropriate information sharing is essential for the provision of safe and effective health care. Improving this will enable enhanced quality of care and safety for patients and better informed clinical and care decision-making, empowered by access to precise and comprehensive information.

The Connecting Care Records programme joins up information based on the individual rather than via one organisation. Through targeted investment, local Connecting Care Record systems have been established in all integrated commissioning board areas. 97% of trusts and 92% of primary care networks are now connected.

As you may also be aware, NHS England has been supporting National Health Service trusts and foundation trusts in acquiring and developing the effectiveness of their electronic patient records, and support is available to bring trusts to an optimum level of digital maturity, which will further reduce barriers to the information sharing needed to treat patients. Further information on data and clinical record sharing is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/data-and-clinical-record-sharing/

Going beyond this, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has announced the intention for there to be a single patient record, which would provide a comprehensive patient record and end the need for patients to have to repeat their medical history when interacting with the NHS. We have been engaging with the public to help shape our plans, including what information they would want to see included in a single record.