GP Connect: Access Record
Published on: 5th February 2024 | Updated on: 21st March 2025
GP Connect: Access Record seeks to make relevant patient medical information available to pharmacy professionals when and where needed to support direct patient care, improving both care and outcomes. Initial use of this will relate to Pharmacy First.
Access Record can provide more structured, integrated and real-time information than National Care Records Service (NCRS) information. Access Record can also provide information which is not within NCRS.
GP Connect (sometimes called NHS Direct Care APIs) is an NHS IT service that allows GP practices and authorised healthcare staff (e.g. relevant pharmacy team members) to share and view electronic health records, appointment information, and data between IT systems.
GP Connect functionality includes:
- GP Connect: Access Record – which allows authorised healthcare staff to view a patient’s record held by the GP practice
- GP Connect: Update Record – which allows authorised healthcare staff to send information to the patient’s record held by the GP practice
- Appointment Management, which lets users share and manage appointments.
Access Record is a functionality group within GP Connect. It is a suite of three products:
- Access Record: Structured provides access to a patient’s record in a machine-readable, structured, and coded format. Structured data allows the system to access information to import and process patient data to support better patients and the healthcare professionals treating them.
- Access Record: HTML enables a read-only view of a patient’s record in a manner relatively less structured
- Access Document allows access to unstructured documents from a patient’s GP practice record. Unstructured documents are usually clinical documents received from various health and care settings and held by a patient’s registered GP practice.
Pharmacy Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) IT system suppliers have focused on integrating with Access Record: Structured.
NCRS (SCR) vs Access Record: Structured
| Product Feature | NCRS (SCR) | Access Record: Structured |
| Real-time access to structured data | Non-real-time | Real-time |
| Access from within the pharmacy clinical system without the need for additional login | Separate login | Separate login not required |
| Medications | Medications present | Roll-out begins March 2025 |
| Uncategorised administrative items/clinical items/observations | Some items present | Roll-out begins March 2025 |
| Investigations | Investigations not present | Roll-out begins March 2025 |
| Allergies and Adverse Reactions | Allergies fields not present | Future roll-out in discussion |
| Consultation encounters | Consultation encounters fields not present | Future roll-out in discussion |
| Problems/Medical History | Problems/Medical History included | Future roll-out in discussion |
| Immunisations | Immunisations included | Future roll-out in discussion |
Benefits
The potential benefits may include:
- Burden reduction for pharmacy teams: Less time switching between community pharmacy applications
- User-friendly system: Provided in a structured format which can be filtered. Information not limited to the past 12 months
- Improved clinical decision-making: Reducing clinical risk and improving patient outcomes
- Joined-up care: Verifying patient medical history and reducing the burden on the patient to remember or relay information
- Patient safety: Enabling community pharmacies to have more accurate, up-to-date information for patient care
Registered community pharmacy professionals can view the patient record directly within the consultation page of the CPCF IT system service module.
Role-based access controls within the IT system will be applied through Smartcards / Care Identity Service 2. There should be no need to copy and paste patient details, such as the NHS number, between systems when making use of the CPCF IT system.
Registered community pharmacy professionals will have access to three clinical areas of the patient’s GP record:
- Medications
- Uncategorised items – any data in the patient’s record that does not fit into one of the existing areas defined by GP Connect (weight, height, body mass index, pulse rate, smoking status, alcohol intake and blood pressure readings)
- Investigations
Pharmacy professionals should continue to use NCRS and other sources for additional clinical information, e.g. allergies
Data flows
Information will only flow to community pharmacy if Access Record: Structured is enabled within the GP IT system and the patient has not withdrawn their consent.
Not every general practice has Access Record: Structured turned on yet, and when they have, some patients will request information is not shared, which means the information may not appear in the pharmacy clinical system when they click the Access Record: Structured link. Community pharmacy professionals should access clinical information via alternative resources, such as NCRS/SCR and ShCR, and ask the patient or call the practice.
GP practices have a process to enable Access Record – where required. See NHS England’s GP Connect Access Record information slide pack (coming soon).
Changes to the GP Contract in 2025/26 – through 2024/2025, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England consulted with the profession on changes to the GP contract for 2025/2026. It was agreed through this consultation that by no later than 1st October 2025, general practices are required to ensure the functionality in GP Connect (Access Record: HTML and Access Record: Structured) is enabled.
If community pharmacy professionals think they should have access to information but don’t, they should contact their IT supplier.
NHS England is continuing work with Pharmacy First IT system suppliers to add Access Record: Structured functionality to their systems. In the meantime, pharmacists providing the Pharmacy First service who do not yet have a CPCF IT system with the Access Record: Structured feature can continue to access elements of the patient’s record held by the GP via the National Care Records Service (NCRS).
Please read our page on GP Connect and the section on that webpage about the use of GP Connect data.
Prescribing system statuses:
| Prescribing system | Access Record: Structured rollout status (prescribing systems) |
| SystmOne (TPP) | Early testing and rollout (onwards until rollout is completed) |
| EMIS [prescribing system] | Early testing and rollout (onwards until rollout is completed) |
| Vision (InPS) | To be determined |
Pharmacy system statuses:
| Pharmacy CPCF IT system supplier and system | Access Record: Structured rollout status (pharmacy systems) |
| Cegedim Pharmacy Services | Testing and rollout (aiming for significant progress within this financial year) |
| EMIS Pinnacle PharmOutcomes | Early testing (aiming for significant progress within this financial year) |
| Positive Solutions HxConsult | Early testing (aiming for significant progress within this financial year) |
| Sonar Informatics | Early testing (aiming for significant progress within this financial year) |
Further info
- Our GP Connect webpage
- Access Record (NHSE’s TD).
Return to the Pharmacy IT hub; GP Connect; Standards and Interoperability or IT a-z index.
For more information on this topic please email it@cpe.org.uk
