GP practices in England will be required to enable Update Record and Access Record functionality in their practices from 1 October 2025, a new deal announced today has stipulated.

The GP Connect Update Record functionality allows registered pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to add updates from Pharmacy First, blood pressure and contraception consultations to patient records.

And Access Record will enable pharmacy systems to access patient records as needed for patient care.

In October, NHSE confirmed that Access Record was being piloted by some pharmacies.

Update Record was introduced alongside the launch of Pharmacy First last year, but was switched off by an estimated two-thirds of GP practices as part of collective action organised by the British Medical Association (BMA).

The BMA advised practices to switch off GP Connect Update Record over fears it would open the door to 'workload dump' on GPs.

Without the functionality, which allows structured updates from pharmacies to be added to patient records automatically or with one click, pharmacies and GP practices had to revert to older practices like NHS mail.

In July, NHS England (NHSE) director of primary care Dr Amanda Doyle said: ‘The NHS introduced this functionality to make GPs working lives easier and improve patient outcomes – so it is odd that any GP would choose to turn this service off and revert to manually inputting data from emails, increasing their workload and taking up more time.’

But at the time she said NHSE would not force GPs to use the system.

Now, the contract agreed this week with the BMA stipulates that:

'By no later than 1 October 2025 GP contractors will be required to ensure the following functionality is enabled in GP Connect which:

  1. allows read only access to patients’ care records (GP Connect Access Record HTML and Structured) by other NHS commissioned providers, for the purposes of direct patient care and read only access for providers of private healthcare (only in cases where the private provider obtains explicit permission from the patient to access their NHS GP care record, and they are providing direct care to the patient).
  2. allows community pharmacy registered professionals to send consultation summaries into the GP practice workflow (GP Connect Update Record).'

Nicola Goodberry Kenneally, chief executive for Community Pharmacy West Yorkshire, told The Pharmacist today that when GP Connect Update record was first introduced, it was 'something community pharmacists were really looking forward to'.

'It was to improve access to patient care records to help pharmacists make more informed decisions. It should improve the communication between general practice and community pharmacy, in an efficient and streamlined way,' she said.

'It has the benefits of reducing some of the administrative burden associated with delivering services within community pharmacy for both GPs and community pharmacy, which has been long wished for.

'We hoped it would increase collaboration and enable pharmacists to more proactively manage patient health in a well-coordinated way.'

But she said that when some GPs chose to switch off GP Connect after the launch of Pharmacy First, 'it meant we were trying to deliver a new service without all the benefits associated with this new functionality'.

And she said that going forwards, the local pharmaceutical committee hoped that the post-event messages could 'flow freely into patient medical records following service delivery', making caring for patients 'a smoother and safer process'.

'We also look forward to being able to deliver the supply of PGD services, safe in the knowledge we have been able to view the patient records to do this in a clinically safe way,' she added.

Nick Hunter, chief officer at Community Pharmacy Nottinghamshire and Community Pharmacy Derbyshire, described the stipulation as 'a significant step forward' that 'will be a huge benefit in safety by improving cross professional NHS care provided to patients'.

'It’s a shame we may have to wait until October for it to be implemented. However, the benefits will be worth the wait,' he added.

Malcolm Harrison, chief executive of the Company Chemists' Association (CCA) said that enabling GP Connect 'will allow for more integration between GPs and community pharmacy'.

'This is essential to providing patients with the best possible care and bringing together all parts of primary care,' he added.

The new contract deal agreed this week will see GPs in England get a £889m uplift in core funding, as well as £80m in additional service fees for asking hospital teams for advice and guidance.

GPs and practice nurses will also be included within the main Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS), and the cap on the number of GPs that can be employed through ARRS will be removed.