Records movement & PCSE Online

The Home Nations has raised concerns regarding the transfer of patient records from GPs in England to GPs in Wales/Scotland and Northern Ireland. It has come to light that some GPs within these areas are receiving incomplete paper medical records in the form of empty Lloyd George envelopes from GPs in England when their patients transfer. This leads to GPs in these areas needing to request additional information and not able to understand their new patients’ needs. As you know, the GP2GP electronic patient records transfer system does not work for people moving from England to out of area practices. GPs are thereby reminded that when a patient has transferred to a GP in Wales/Scotland or Northern Ireland and they receive a request to transfer their record, the Lloyd George envelope should contain the full printout of the electronic record and sent via the Primary Care Support England process (PCSE). GPs are advised to contact PCSE if they required support on the process. The GP practice remains responsible for ensuring the transfer of patient records (electronic and paper Lloyd George notes) and confidential information to the GP at out of area practices, having full regard to confidentiality and data protection requirements, Records Management: NHS Code of Practice guidance, and any relevant guidance from the Health & Social Care Information Centre or the Information Commissioner's Office.”

Practices should use the new ‘Request Movement’ area of PCSE Online to request the movement of:

1. Records for patients no longer registered at your practice
2. Additional notes for a record you have already returned
3. A record you were not expecting

You’ll be asked to enter the patient’s NHS number on PCSE Online. CitySprint will deliver a tracking label for the record movement with your usual records collections and delivery. You can then put the record in a shipping bag, affix the label, and leave for CitySprint to collect.

To request an urgent medical record, visit our Contact Us page and and complete a new Medical Record Movement enquiry.

When an urgent medical record has been successfully submitted, you will receive an email notification confirming that the request has been received. The email will contain a case reference number which can be used to follow up on the case if required.

Please note that only contacts registered with PCSE will be able to submit urgent medical record requests using the new form. In order to become a registered contact, the main contact we hold for your organisation can register you on PCSE Online via the ‘User Management’ section. 

You should only use this form if your request is clinically urgent, or if the request is in relation to adoption; gender re-assignment; witness protection; or a safeguarding investigation.

PCSE will then arrange for the patient’s previous GP to fax or email the clinically urgent information to your practice. For information governance reasons, we can only accept and send emails containing patient information from nhs.net email accounts. We will also ask the practice to release the paper medical record in their next CitySprint collection.

Please note, this urgent request process doesn’t necessarily accelerate the time it will take to move the paper record.

If you have any queries on this new process, please contact us via the online enquiries form. Select ‘Medical record movement’ and complete the details requested.

Please visit the Contact Us page and complete a new Medical Record Movement enquiry.

It is likely that the change is still being processed on our system, through SPINE. It can take some time for the change to be validated, so please wait a few days and check the system again. If it is still not visible, then please visit the Contact Us page and complete a new Medical Record Movement enquiry.

New registrants include babies, patients recently arrived from overseas and any other patients who have an NHS number allocated for the first time at the point of registration.

As part of NHS England's push to digitise medical records the issuing of new medical record envelopes (Lloyd Georges) for patients registering with the NHS for the first time has now been ceased.

Any registrations processed after the 1st January 2021 for these groups will not be automatically issued with a physical medical record as previously occurred. Practices that are unable to scan notes onto an electronic record are still be able to order a Lloyd George for transferring records.   

PCSE will then send a new registration letter directly to the patient’s home address.

Replacement registration letters or medical cards are not provided. If a patient needs their NHS number, they can get this from their current GP.