News of summary care record access throughout England has seen a widespread show of support from pharmacy groups.

In a joint statement from the RPS, Pharmacy Voice and the PSNC, the group said “We welcome and fully support the deployment of access to the Summary Care Record to all community pharmacies in England. There has long been a consensus across the profession that widening access to health information to community pharmacy will enable safer, better and more accessible care.”

Professor Rob Darracott, chief executive of Pharmacy Voice, went on to say: ‘Pharmacy Voice has long called for record access by community pharmacists to further enhance patient safety and care. This is a positive first step to what we hope will be full read and write access to patient records, enabling pharmacy teams to provide better patient care and help provide a more consistent primary care service to patients.’

More than 96 per cent of the population have an SCR and it is already being successfully used in many settings across the NHS, such as A&E departments, hospital pharmacies, NHS 111 and GP out of hours services and walk in centres. ‘We believe that giving patients the choice to allow pharmacy professionals to access their records can help them to receive better care,’ said Duncan Rudkin, chief executive of the General Pharmaceutical Council.

‘The pharmacy professionals supporting them will have access to important information about their medical history and their medicines and will be able to work more effectively with other health professionals involved in their care.’ Mimi Lau, Numark’s director of pharmacy services, commented that this was a significant step forward for community pharmacy ‘at a crucial time given the recent announcement by Jeremy Hunt to provide better access to care for patients’. Other countries should follow, she suggested. But progress ‘mustn’t stop there’, she said.

‘Pharmacists need to be able to have ‘write’ access as the second phase to the Summary Care Record. When this happens, pharmacists will be able to view and update medical records, making sure that the GP knows the outcome of each and every consultation. This will truly be primary integrated care working at its best to benefit patients and the NHS.’