SCRa portal being replaced by National Care Records Service
The Summary Care Record (SCRa) application portal is scheduled to be replaced by a new system called the National Care Records Service (NCRS) from September 2023.
From now until September, both the SCRa portal and the NCRS portal will be accessible.
NCRS portal and SCR portal differences
The NCRS enables pharmacy professionals to:
- view the previous Summary Care Record;
- access further information such as NHS Record Locator information and access documents;
- experience an improved look and feel compared to SCRa; and
- easily have access on mobile devices.
Testing and using NCRS portal
Pharmacy professionals can start using the new NCRS portal even before the SCRa portal is phased out later this year. You can visit the NCRS portal via this link using a pharmacy computer with an NHS smartcard reader (e.g. a Patient Medication Record PC). You will need to use your NHS smartcard and the following ‘test patient’ NHS numbers will allow you to see how records look within NCRS:
999 040 2132
999 025 2955
999 024 0272.
When you have tested the NCRS, please provide some feedback to help improve the system by completing this 3-minute NCRS feedback survey.
Pharmacy SCR users can also volunteer to participate in user research interviews which NHS England’s Transformation Directorate is conducting, which will explore preferences on the design of the NCRS Overview and Covid-19 vaccination tabs. Register interest using this NCRS user research interview webform.
PSNC comment
Commenting on the launch of NCRS, PSNC’s Community Pharmacy IT Policy Manager, Daniel Ah-Thion, said:
“The new NCRS is a welcome improvement on SCRa and is one further step on the journey to pharmacy professionals having easy access to medical records when and where they need it, to provide the best possible care to their patients.
“The release of the new replacement for SCR portal should prompt NHS England to also modernise pharmacy SCR usage protocols and the consent model. We call on them to consider making such changes as soon as possible and to continue their work to support the alignment of NHS IT standards and greater interoperability of IT systems so busy pharmacy teams have fewer systems to log in to.”
Further information
