AQW 27655/22-27


Ms Kate Nicholl
Alliance Party
South Belfast


Tabled Date: 23/05/2025
Answered On Date: 12/01/2026
Priority Written: No


Question:
To ask the Minister of Health what engagement he has had with his counterparts in the (i) UK Government; (ii) Scottish Government; and (iii) Welsh Government in relation to improving the processes for transferring medical records when people move from (a) Great Britain to Northern Ireland; and (b) Northern Ireland to Great Britain.


Answer:
My Department’s Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO) is a member of a four UK jurisdictions forum which considers the receiving and sharing of primary care medical records for patients moving from GB to NI and vice versa.
It is anticipated that this issue will be raised at its next meeting in March 2026.
For records transferring from Scotland, it may be possible to provide an interim solution, with records transferred in PDF format. BSO is currently engaging with counterparts in Scotland to deliver this interim solution.
In recent weeks, staff of the BSO have been in discussions with counterparts in England, who also manage a hub in Wales, to determine if the same interim solution could be extended to their regions. Colleagues in England have advised that they would prefer a UK wide solution and have agreed to undertake factfinding before feeding back.
Under current arrangements when patients or service users move permanently to another UK jurisdiction, there are established processes in place between BSO and their UK counterparts to securely transfer GP and other records.
When a patient registers with a GP practice in Northern Ireland and the patient has been identified as having relocated to NI from GB, an electronic ‘deduction’ request is processed by the HSC Business Services Organisation (BSO), i.e. a notification is sent to the relevant GB health authority which requests the medical records of the patient to be forwarded to the BSO.
Records are transferred from England and Wales to the BSO by courier and from Scotland via a postal delivery service. When records are received into BSO they are forwarded to the new GP practice on the next available weekly delivery via BSO courier.
When a patient registers with a GP practice in England a request is made to remove the patient’s details from the Business Services Organisation (BSO) registration system and provide information about the area of England in which the practice is situated.
The patient’s GP practice in Northern Ireland is notified to send the medical records via BSO courier service. Once processed by BSO, within 4 to 5 days, records are delivered via BSO courier on a weekly basis to the Primary Care Support England centre in Darlington where they are distributed to the new GP practice in England.
In relation to secondary care medical records, these can be obtained by the receiving hospital/consultant requesting a copy of a patient’s medical records, with the patient’s consent, in writing, from the relevant Trust under the purpose of ‘continuity of care’.
Alternatively, patients can request a copy of their medical records by making a Subject Access Request (SAR) to the relevant Trust.
With the introduction of the encompass system if a patient takes unwell elsewhere in the UK (outside NI) and presents to hospital the hospital can seek consent via EPIC for the patient’s encompass records to be accessed. Patients who have the My Care app can also share their records with medical staff.