Moving Medical Records

Overview

A practice may receive a deduction for a patient because they've registered at a new practice, the patient has left the country or the practice have marked the patient as deceased in their clinical system.

The patient's medical record will either follow them to their new practice or be sent to our central records storage facility. To enable the medical record to be moved correctly, a tracking label is automatically generated and sent to the deducting practice.

You can view a diagram depicting the process here.

As best practice, we advise practices to release the records as soon as possible. Please note, there is approximately 3-4 weeks between the date of deduction and the label being received at the practice.

Releasing Medical Records

1. Label delivered

The patient deduction generates a label which is then printed and delivered by CitySprint.
2. Bag the record

When the label arrives, put the record in a shipping bag.
3. Attach the label

Attach the right-hand label to the shipping bag in the box labelled “NHS Staff Affix Address Label Here”.
4. Record collected

Records will be collected the following week by CitySprint.

Receiving medical records

After you have registered the patient at your practice, the time it takes to receive the physical record is dependent on the deducting practice.

Once the record is released, it could take up to two weeks for you to receive the record.

The record will be delivered on your usual CitySprint delivery day. This could take longer for patients who are registering with you from outside of England.

PCSE Online

You can use PCSE Online to:

track the status of your inbound records
view a list of outbound record requests so you can see what records you need to prepare
order additional tracking labels for large records or if your label has been damaged
order additional shipping bags when you start to run low
move a record or notes you don't have a label for using the 'Request movement' section