Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to reduce the time taken for the Defence Medical Service to release veterans’ medical records to their GP.

When an individual leaves the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) recognises the importance of facilitating the transfer of healthcare information to their civilian healthcare provider(s).

On leaving Defence Medical Services (DMS) care, Service personnel are provided with a medical care summary, known as an FMed133, and advised to register with an NHS GP and provide them a copy of their FMED 133.

If a patient’s full DMS health record is required, this is provided on request from their NHS GP. Given this and that some records are never requested, no accurate estimate can be made of the average time from discharge to the receipt of the medical records by the NHS GP.

To improve the transfer of healthcare information, DMS is working towards the greater interoperability with NHS systems and the electronic transfer of medical records from DMS to NHS GPs and expects to implement changes over the next 1-2 years.