Summary Care Record now caters for cautious patients

Members of the public who don’t think they want their summary care record shared but would still like to keep their options open for the future are being offered a new Orange ‘keep their options open’ choice of a record that is recorded but only shared when they give their explicit consent.

This latest evolution of the consent model for Summary Care Records was unveiled at a Friday press demonstration of the SCR led by Connecting for Health’s joint GP clinical lead, Dr Gillian Braunold.

She explained that the new option had been introduced following the commitment given last November by the then Health Minister Lord Warner when he said that people can choose not just to have their SCR record shared but to not have any SCR created and stored on the national database. Engineering this ‘red light’ option gave rise to the new orange option on the three traffic light consent states.

Any patients unsure about the SCR should go for Orange, says Dr Braunold. "Orange exists for patients who say I’m not sure about this, but if I’m sick I would like to be able to give my consent."

If they choose at a later date an orange patient can ask their consent flag to be changed to read ‘expressed consent’ for a particular instance of their record being shared, such as for use in unscheduled out of hours care.

As a result of the latest changes the SCR consent model now has three hues, or versions. Patients can either be green: and consent to have their record stored and shared; they can be orange and have a record stored but elect not to share it at that point; or they can be red and have no record either stored or shared.

Although the new technical arrangements that will allow the traffic light model of consent has been commissioned, it has yet to be implemented "so interim arrangements" will be in place at the SCR pilot sites.