National Care Records Service

The National Care Records Service (NCRS) allows health and care professionals to: 

• view summarised health and care information for over 63 million patient records  
• access and update patient information, regardless of their integrated care system (ICS) 
• support a patient’s direct care where a full patient record is not required  

NCRS is a free to use, web-based application that can be used in clinical, office or mobile environments.  

NCRS is for authorised users in any health or care setting, including: 

• clinicians 
• care workers 
• administrators 
• healthcare professionals, such as dentists, pharmacists and optometrists 

NCRS offers:  

• ‘NCRS integration’, a shortcut to NCRS patient records from local systems that have onboarded using the Supplier Conformance Assessment List (SCAL)
• combined information from Summary Care Record (SCR), National Record Locator (NRL), Child Protection Information Sharing (CP-IS), Reasonable Adjustments, Female Genital Mutilation Information Sharing (FGM-IS), COVID vaccination history, and GP Connect data (see the Roadmap for more information)
• birth notifications and NHS number allocations 
• viewing and editing demographics 
• chargeable status, including the ability for a user to record information and displaying information from the Home Office 

To access NCRS, you must:  

• have an NHS Care identity service profile

• have an NHS Care Identity Service authenticator, which can include existing smartcards  

• have a role-based access control (RBAC) code that allows you to access NCRS  

• be part of an organisation that has onboarded using the Supplier Conformance Assessment List (SCAL) 

• have a role-based access control (RBAC) role with a minimum activity code of B0264

See the activity codes associated with each NCRS feature in user guidance. 

If your organisation has not onboarded to NCRS, it should complete the new interest form.  

General patient details within NCRS include:  

• name 
• address 
• date of birth 
• date of death 
• contact details 
• next of kin  
• registered GP 
• nominated pharmacy 
• NHS number 
• historic demographic information 
• Chargeable Status and Home Office information 

Clinical information includes:  

• any flags or alerts for the patient, such as a child protection, female genital mutilation or Reasonable Adjustments  
• the patient's Summary Care Record 
• links to any documents on the patient’s record 
• COVID-19 vaccinations 
• GP Connect information (available to pilot users only - see the NCRS Roadmap for further information) 

NCRS should be used:  

• where access to a summary of key patient information is required to support clinical decision making and full detailed patient records are not required  
• to complement local shared records by giving access to key patient information across ICS boundaries  
• where a local shared care record is not currently available  
• when information is not available in your local system 

The strategic intention for NCRS was set out in the Department for Health and Social Care policy Plan for digital health and care, part of the work to build core national ‘connect’ capabilities.  

This is to enable authorised health and care professionals to have a holistic experience of the health and care system, no matter where they are geographically located. 

This service is strongly recommended for all organisations that support direct care in England. 

This service is live. 

NCRS is a gold service, meaning it will be available and supported 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 

Refer to the Service Management page for details on live service status statistics.