National Document Repository (NDR): Access and store digital patient documents

Lloyd George records are historical paper based records for GP patients that were used across the United Kingdom before GP records were digitised. Many patients still have Lloyd George records that contain information that was recorded prior to digitisation. 

Some practices have local solutions for scanning and digitising Lloyd George records. Others still have the original paper records. For further information see Digitisation of Lloyd George records. 

The National Document Repository (NDR) is a central place where digital patient documents can be accessed and stored by frontline services. Access and store digital patient documents is the first service available within the NDR. It allows practices and Primary Care Support England (PCSE) to access, view and download digital Lloyd George records. This service is free at the point of use there is no charge to practices for using it once their records have been scanned. The Patient Record Management (PRM) team are responsible for delivering this service. 

National Data Processing Deed 

Patient Lloyd George records are held in the NDR in accordance with The National Data Processing Deed. 

The National Data Processing enables NHS England to:   

• act as the data processor for all GP practices in England

• store the digitised Lloyd George records of patients registered at these GP practices  

This deed operates under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018.   

GP practices in England are automatically signed up to the National Data Processing Deed.  

Data Protection Impact Assessment 

NHS England has completed a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) in relation to the NDR and the Access and store digital patient documents service.  

You may wish to update your local DPIAs to reference this.  

For a copy of the DPIA, email [email protected] 

This service is for Primary Care Support England (PCSE) and practice staff, including clinicians and GP administrators. They can access digitised Lloyd George records stored in the NDR by signing in to the service with their NHS smartcard.   

It is strongly recommended for all GP practices in England to use this service because it enables GP practice staff to access the digital records of registered patients. 

Examples of use include:

• a clinician accessing a patient's digital Lloyd George record to support clinical decision making 
• a GP administrator accessing a patient's digital Lloyd George record to fulfil an access request 

As this is a national NHS England service, all practices will have access to this digital service. Lloyd George records stored in the NDR do not need to be moved or printed, so this will reduce the need to send and receive paper records. 

For more details, see Benefits of Lloyd George digitisation to patients and practices.

GP practice staff can sign in to the service and access the records of patients registered with their practice. Not all patients will have a digital Lloyd George record stored in the service.  

Practices and PCSE can sign into the service and download a report to see the list of Lloyd George records stored for their organisation.

For the initial roll out, the service works like this:

1. Upload records

To transfer Lloyd George records into the NDR, they must be digitised to the national scanning standard. This could be funded by the practice, the ICB or the Primary Care Network. 

Scanning suppliers work with practices to scan their Lloyd George records and upload them to the NDR via secure file transfer protocol (SFTP). 

You can find information about the scanning standard and approved scanning suppliers on the FutureNHS Digital Primary Care workspace (you will need a FutureNHS account to access these specifications):  

• Specification for digitisation of GP records  

• Scan on demand frameworks  

All suppliers listed have committed to scanning records according to the national scanning standard. 

We are planning to develop functionality that will allow practices to upload individual records to the NDR. 

Practices can still access records even if they haven’t transferred all their records into the NDR. As more practices roll onto the service, practices may start to receive more patients whose records are in the NDR, reducing the volume of paper records they receive. 

2. Access records

Practice staff, including clinicians and GP administrators, can: 

• sign in to the service's user interface, using their NHS smartcard or other CIS2 authentication method
• search for a patient using their NHS number 
• view the patient's Lloyd George record, if it is stored in the NDR
• download a report of the Lloyd George records stored in the service for their organisation

EMIS and TPPSystmOne practices 

TPPSystmOne restricts the ability of its practices to attach Lloyd George records to electronic health records (EHRs), so we expect that TPP practices will adopt the service first. 

EMIS practices may start to receive more patients with Lloyd George records in the NDR if their patients have previously been registered at a TPP practice. 

This service is in beta. We are rolling out the service to GP practices in the Birmingham and Solihull (BSOL) area.

This is a bronze service, meaning it is available and supported during business hours 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday but not bank holidays.

There is a phased programme of roll out for this service.

The PRM team hold regular show and tells. These events are for GP practice staff, ICBs and other interested groups, to keep them updated on changes to the service and the progress of the roll out. If you would like to join a Show and Tell, please contact the PRM team on [email protected].