Digitised medical records

When will a fully digitised practice receive a medical records transit label?

Once your practice has fully digitised its medical records, you will no longer routinely receive transit labels for patients leaving your practice. Before digitisation, these labels would have been used to send a patient’s paper medical record to their new GP practice.

There are some circumstances where your practice may still receive or need a transit label. If a transit label is provided, it must be used to send the relevant patient record or documentation.

This includes:

If your practice has requested a transit label through PCSE Online, for example, when additional patient notes are found after the patient’s record has already been transferred and need to be sent to the patient’s new GP practice.
If a patient’s medical record is in suspense.
If a GP2GP transfer cannot take place, including where:
the patient is not registered with a new GP practice
the patient is moving from England to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland
the patient is going to prison
the patient is joining the Armed Forces or is an Armed Forces dependant

Where a transit label is provided for one of these exceptions, use the label to ensure the record is sent to the correct destination through the PCSE medical records process.

When do I need to print a patient's full medical record, and how should it be printed?

You need to print a patient's full medical record in one of the scenarios below:

Scenario	Example
Your practice requests a transit label through PCSE Online	Additional notes for a patient may be found following digitisation. Notes should be printed and sent using the transit label. A full copy of the medical record does not need to be printed in this scenario.
Patient has moved to a Home Nation (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)	GP2GP transfer does not work in this scenario. Full copy of medical record needs to be printed and sent using the transit label.
Patient is not currently registered with another GP practice	GP2GP transfer is not applicable in this scenario. Full copy of medical record needs to be printed and sent using the transit label. Record will be stored until patient registers.
Patient movement into Health and Justice	GP2GP transfer does not work in this scenario. Full copy of medical record needs to be printed and sent using the transit label.
Patient movement to Defence Medical Services (Military)	GP2GP transfer does not work in this scenario. Full copy of medical record needs to be printed and sent using the transit label.
Defence Medical Services patient dependant movement	GP2GP transfer does not work in this scenario. Full copy of medical record needs to be printed and sent using the transit label.
Patient is deceased	GP2GP transfer is not applicable in this scenario. Full copy of medical record needs to be printed and sent using the transit label. Record will be stored in accordance with NHS England retention policies.

When printing the medical record:

Print the full patient record - please see table above for additional paper notes that have been found for a patient's digitised medical record.
Print each document page individually onto A4.
Do not reduce or combine multiple scanned pages of the medical record onto a single sheet of A4, as this could make the information difficult to read.
Check all documents are clear and legible, with no information cut off.
Make sure information relating to different members of a family is kept as separate individual records.
Do not provide electronic medical records on a USB or memory stick, CD, DVD or other electronic storage media.
Place the records for each individual patient inside a polylope bag and make available for next collection. These CSA bags can be ordered in the Supplies section of PCSE Online.

If we have sent medical records GP2GP, do we still need a tracking label?

If a patient's medical records are digitised, you should send the new GP a digitisation letter.

If a patient's medical records are digitised but GP2GP fails, your practice should print all electronic records and use label to send hard copy of the notes.

If you never received a patient's medical records, send compliment slip alongside all the notes your practice have created to the new GP advising you never received the original records, using the tracking label.

For patients registered after January 2021* whose records should be fully electronic, labels wont be issued unless:

Patient is unregistered
Patient is moving to another Home Nation
Patient is going to Prison
Patient is joining the Armed Forces or an Armed Forces dependant.

In these instances, the GP2GP transfer will fail and the electronic records will need to be printed. This is why a label is issued.

If you hold paper records but don't receive a label, you will need to be request the label in PCSE Online.

*You can identify patients who have first registered after January 2021 using the "No Paper Record" status in PCSE Online.

How can we obtain electronic records we are waiting for that were last held by a closed practice?

PCSE have been advised in these instances to contact the ICB for the closed practice as they store the closed practices electronic records on some occasions.

How do we know if a medical record we have received for a new patient has been previously digitised or no Lloyd George has been issued?

You can see this by using the "Records In" section on PCSE Online.

"No NPR created" - means no Lloyd George was ever issued
"No Paper Record" - means no Lloyd George was ever issued and the patient has since changed GP's - you should receive the records electronically GP2GP. (This is only for patients first registered after January 2021)

Unfortunately, PCSE are unable to confirm regarding any other potential record digitisation as we are not involved with or notified by any of the digitisation projects undertaken by numerous practices. The previous GP's who digitise the notes will need to confirm that the records have been digitised by sending a digitisation letter when releasing the patient records to a new practice.