Policy paper

Health Bill: single patient record - fact sheet

Published 19 May 2026

Applies to England

Introduction

Too often, patients experience care which is not joined up, having to tell their story time and time again when they meet a new clinician. This is not just an inconvenience: it puts patient safety at risk. When clinicians do not have all the relevant facts available, they cannot make the best decisions, and patients lose out.

A lack of joined up care records also means that there are missed opportunities to diagnose and treat people early. Too many patients are left seeking urgent care once their health has deteriorated. But we should be able to spot problems and intervene early. This is better for patients’ health and better value for money. This is not possible without joined up information and a single version of the truth. The lack of a single, accurate source of information, accessible by patients themselves, is causing harm.

We are determined to give people more control over their lives. A health and care system that revolves around patients, rather than patients revolving around them. The Health Bill (‘the bill’) will provide the framework that will enable patients’ health and social care records to be brought together in one place. This document explains how the bill will, alongside other key issues such as the development of a technical solution, enable the creation of the single patient record.

Background

The single patient record - why change is needed now

When people think about the NHS, many assume that doctors, nurses and other staff across the country can already see their full medical history, and that when you move between hospitals, or when your GP refers you to a consultant, your records travel with you. That assumption is understandable. But for most people, it is not yet the reality.

Right now, health and care information is fragmented. Different parts of the country have different systems, different levels of data sharing and different capabilities. The result is that healthcare professionals are regularly working with incomplete pictures of their patients, and patients are left to fill in the gaps, often repeating their medical history to clinician after clinician, sometimes at the most stressful moments of their lives.

Some areas of England have made real progress through shared care records, which allow clinicians to access integrated records across local services. These have made a genuine difference. But they only work at a regional level and do not connect nationally, and they do not give patients direct access to their own information. In a country as interconnected as ours, that is not good enough.

Fixing the Foundations (PDF, 485KB), published by Age UK in 2023, highlighted the issues with continuity of care for older people. The 2025 report Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care (PDF, 2.9MB) into 611 women who died during pregnancy, or in the year after, found that fragmented care and limited communication between providers meant critical information was often not shared. This was a significant factor in nearly half of the deaths. For more than a decade, patient groups and organisations across the country have been calling for exactly the kind of change the single patient record is expected to deliver. As far back as 2013, National Voices captured it simply and powerfully - ‘I would like to tell my story once.’

A public deliberation sponsored by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in late 2024 and early 2025 run by independent facilitators, involving 2,000 people across England (including individuals with specific health needs and those from marginalised communities) found that the majority of respondents were in favour of a single patient record. They considered it to be a ‘long overdue and necessary step towards better care’ and emphasised the need for maximum security, transparency and pace in its development.

Participants who took part told us:

The benefit is, especially if you have a complex condition, you have that information in one place, especially in emergency situations.

It’s unfair to expect clinicians to treat you in the best way if they do not have the holistic information.

I do think it’s vitally important that secondary uses [purposes other than for direct care, like planning or research] are developed further because it’s the only way we can all learn from things, isn’t it? Thinking about research, that is absolutely vital in the future for developing cures.

The single patient record will bring together a person’s health and social care information in one secure, accessible place for the first time. It will mean that wherever a patient is treated - whether at their local GP practice, a hospital across the country or a specialist service - the clinicians caring for them will have access to the same complete, accurate record.

For patients, this means no more repeating your story. For clinicians, it means being able to deliver safer, quicker and more accurate care, without juggling multiple systems or working with missing information. For the NHS, it means greater efficiency and fewer costly mistakes.

The bill provides the legislative framework for the single patient record. This will support a level playing field across the country, so that everyone has access to the same information.

Objectives of the bill

The primary legislation contains the power to create the single patient record and the legal framework that will underpin it. It establishes the purpose of the single patient record - to bring together patient information from existing separate sources and make it available to patients and their relevant health and care providers such as GPs, hospital doctors, social care providers or others involved in their direct care. This legislation will be extensively scrutinised by Parliament through all bill stages.

The bill will enable the Secretary of State of Health and Social Care to specify in regulations:

• who can and who must share data with the single patient record, for example different providers of care
• who can see the data, such as the relevant professionals delivering health and social care and those providing essential support, as well as patients being able to see their own record
• how the system will be enforced

The bill does not provide any new legal gateway for secondary purposes such as planning, commissioning or research. Instead, it contains a saving provision so that the single patient record can be a source of data for purposes other than direct care only where there is an existing, separate legal basis to do so (for example through the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002).

Improvements to patient care

The legislation will enable the delivery of the 10 Year Health Plan commitment that patients will have access to their single patient record by default, and that from 2028 they will be able to view it securely on the NHS App. It also underpins the plan’s wider objectives: shifting care closer to home, supporting prevention and modernising the NHS through digital services that work consistently at national scale.

For patients

The single patient record will transform people’s experience of care. At long last people will have mobile access to a full summary of their health record through the NHS App or online, empowering them to:

• take greater control of their health and care
• be able to discuss this additional knowledge with a professional
• be able to engage with their health record
• identify any corrections needed and request amendments
• over time, feed into the record

By having access to the single patient record, patients are also expected to benefit from:

• improved outcomes from care delivered by professionals who have all the essential information
• less repetition of medical history
• easier access to their information

For health professionals

Healthcare professionals in primary and secondary care currently navigate multiple systems, with sometimes incomplete or inconsistent information. Information must often be transferred manually between care settings. Providers lack a complete, real-time view of patient information across regions and care settings, making it harder to deliver joined-up care. Shared care records have demonstrated what can be achieved, but have not provided a uniform, comprehensive single record across the country.

In the single patient record discovery staff survey 2025, one GP said:

Each time I see an upbeat article in Digital Health about one provider succeeding in viewing the record of another provider I sigh. It’s 2025 and comprehensive sharing and viewing should be the norm by now.

By using the single patient record, professionals are expected to benefit from:

• faster access to critical information
• fewer logins and reduced administrative burden
• safer decision making with fewer information gaps
• better coordination of care across trusts and regions

For social care professionals

Social care professionals have access to only limited medical history and cannot easily share vital observations and updates with clinical teams when patients are receiving care in the community. Relevant care professionals are expected to have improved access to patient information across care settings, where appropriate, to support their patient population and deliver preventative care as part of an integrated care package.

For improving and advancing care

Patient data is vital to help plan, commission and run NHS and social care services safely, effectively and efficiently, ensuring people get the right care at the right time in the right place. Using data in the single patient record (with the right security, privacy and legal protections in place) could be transformative for:

• faster and more equitable data-led strategic service planning and commissioning, enabling real-time, real-world evidence of patient and population need, intervention and outcomes
• the development of diagnostics, treatments and cures for serious illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, long COVID and heart disease, and for examining the effectiveness of new medicines

While single patient record data will be available for uses which benefit everyone, such as planning and research, any organisation that wishes to access single patient record data must follow the existing legal, ethical and governance processes to access health data for purposes other than direct care. The bill preserves existing legal bases for sharing patient data for secondary purposes.

Building the single patient record

Approach and features of the single patient record

The approach to the single patient record will ensure that it is:

• safe by design
• secure by design
• built to the highest standards of data governance
• interoperable by design, so NHS systems work seamlessly together
• cost effective

The single patient record is being developed with:

• tiered, role-based access, giving professionals only the information they need
• the highest levels of security, supported by training and technical controls
• transparency, explaining clearly how data will be used and accessed
• accountability, with strong governance and sanctions when required

The single patient record will be delivered through contracts with multiple suppliers with no single supplier dominating. No decisions have been made about who these will be.

Single patient record rollout and future engagement

The single patient record will, wherever possible, build on and connect with existing health and care source systems, such as electronic patient records and shared care records, rather than replacing them. Throughout the development of the single patient record, we will build on the findings of our public engagement and continue to engage with the public and a wide range of stakeholders.

We will develop and deliver the single patient record across priority care pathways, with multidisciplinary input, from clinical, technical, transformation staff and users. The first pathways will be maternity and frailty. For example, people living with frailty will benefit from joined up information that supports proactive, community-based care, and women using maternity services will benefit from safer, more coordinated care through a single, up-to-date clinical summary.

By March 2027, clinicians in England will benefit from improved access to records for at least 80% of patients through the connection of existing shared care records. Our ambition is that from 2028, all patients in England will have access to a core set of their data through the single patient record, viewable securely through the NHS App. Some people’s records will have access to the additional data relevant to the maternity and frailty pathways, and over the next 2 years, additional pathways such as cancer and mental health will be released into the single patient record and rolled out across the country. The goal is that by 2030, the whole population of England will have access to the full range of data through the single patient record.

The following case studies are based on scenarios identified by health and care professionals.

Maternity

Leila is a 27-year-old, first time mother who has developed gestational diabetes. She is South Asian, living in Morecambe Bay with her husband. Leila has a history of anxiety which can sometimes lead to panic attacks. English is not Leila’s first language and she relies on her husband to translate for her, but he is not always around due to work. She has more appointments than normal and has to keep track of them all.

The single patient record will meet Leila’s need for joined up care and reduce the burden on her.

I want all my health information - from my past medical history to my current blood glucose readings for gestational diabetes - to be accessible to every healthcare professional involved in my care, so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.

I want an easy experience of care, where my GP, midwife, consultant, and any other specialists are all working from the same up‑to‑date information, understanding my mental health history, giving me consistent advice, and sticking to what I want from my birthing plan.

I want my health information to be readily available to clinicians so my husband can then focus on supporting me and being actively involved, rather than spending time relaying my medical history.

Frailty

Harold is an 80‑year‑old widower who’s spent his life rooted in his community, doing his best to stay independent while quietly worrying about how long he can manage on his own.

Nick, Harold’s son, struggles to access important information like appointment letters and medical updates when they’re only sent to Harold, leaving him out of the loop. He often has to repeat Harold’s history to different services because information is not shared consistently across teams.

Dr Janice, community geriatrician, struggles with fragmented information across systems, which makes it difficult to form a complete clinical picture and slows timely, confident decision‑making.

The single patient record will meet the need for Harold and his family to more effectively manage his information, and for his doctor to have all the information she needs to care for him.

I want every professional who involved in my care to understand my needs and history so I don’t have to repeat myself and I can get safer, more coordinated care. 

I want my son to be able to see my up-to-date health and care information so he can support me with my care and appointments.

I want Dr Janice to be able to see the whole picture of my health and care so she can make early decisions that can help me to keep independent.