Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that all providers of NHS services, including those in the voluntary and independent sector, are required to input data into the Single Patient Record.

We fully intend that independent and voluntary sector providers can be part of the Single Patient Record. The Health Bill provides powers to make regulations that can enable or require relevant providers involved in an individual’s direct health and social care to contribute to, and access, the patient information that they need via the Single Patient Record. We will need to explore carefully how the flows of information should work. Existing legislation allows for mandatory information standards to set technical requirements for all providers to ensure interoperability.