Transfer of Care – Acute Inpatient Discharge Standard
The eDischarge Summary Standard enables hospitals to safely transfer accurate clinical information and coded data to GP surgeries, care homes and community services when a patient is discharged. It ensures all relevant information about the patient, including diagnoses, medications, procedures and allergies, is shared in order to improve the quality and consistency of care. Best practice is also to share the discharge summary with the patient.
Current release
From 01 January 2026, this standard will be owned and managed by NHS England and is made available for reuse or amendment under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL 3.0). A review of the ongoing requirement for this standard will be undertaken by NHS England. Details on this and any update to the standard will be published on the NHS Standards Directory. If you have any questions or feedback relating to this standard, please email: england.standards.assurance@nhs.net.
About this standard
This standard defines the information content and structure that should be used to create a hospital discharge. It is designed for sending coded and structured electronic discharges which can be transferred to primary care and other systems and used to populate their record systems.
Benefits:
- Patient safety:
- Information needed for safe continuity of care available on a timely basis.
- Avoiding transcription errors when medication information is electronically transferred to the GP record.
- Patient care and patient satisfaction:
- Consistent and timely information (including medications, diagnoses, procedures and allergies) transferred to care professionals and their GP practice.
- Providing patients with legible up to date information about their hospital stay.
- Time savings for NHS organisations by avoiding the need to re-type information into the GP record
- Increased opportunity for future development of patient-led care by ensuring interoperability between multiple systems.
How to complete a discharge summary
Summary table
The hospital electronic patient record (EPR) is expected to be able to generate much of the discharge summary from information recorded in the record such as diagnoses, procedures, medications, investigation results, assessments, patient demographics and other administrative information, with the person completing the record adding other information such as the clinical summary, plan and requested actions.
The standard comprises 22 sections, 6 mandatory (must be included), 10 required (should be included where the information is available), 6 optional (local choice whether to include the information). These are shown in the summary table below.
| Transfer of Care – Acute Inpatient Discharge Standard summary table | ||
| Section | Description | MRO* |
| Patient demographics | Patient details and contact information. | mandatory |
| GP practice | Details of the GP practice where the patient is registered. | mandatory |
| Referrer details | Details of the individual or team who referred the patient. | required |
| Social context | The social setting in which the patient lives, such as their household, occupational history, and lifestyle factors. | optional |
| Individual requirements | Individual requirements that a person has, e.g. communication, cultural, cognitive, mobility needs and reasonable adjustments. | required |
| Participation in research | The details of any research studies the patient is participating in. | optional |
| Admission details | Details of the patient’s admission and reason for admission | required |
| Discharge details | The details of the patient’s discharge from hospital including discharge destination. | required |
| Diagnoses | A list of the patient’s diagnoses. | mandatory |
| Procedures | The details of any procedures performed. | optional |
| Clinical summary | A brief description of the episode of care. | mandatory |
| Investigation results | A record of investigations and procedures requested, results and plans. | optional |
| Assessments | A description of any assessments used. | optional |
| Legal information | Legal information captured relating to patient care, such as consent to sharing information, legal power of attorney, safeguarding issues and mental capacity. | required |
| Safety alerts | The details of any risks the patient poses to themselves or others. | required |
| Medications and Medical Devices | The details of and instructions for medications and medical equipment the patient is using. Includes changes in prescribed medications. | optional |
| Allergies and adverse reactions | The details of any known allergies, intolerances or adverse reactions. | mandatory |
| Patient and carer concerns, expectations and wishes | A description of the concerns, expectations or wishes of the patient. | required |
| Information and advice given | A record of any information or advice given to the patient, carer or relevant third party. | required |
| Plan and requested actions | Plans and requested actions for other healthcare professionals and the patient or their carer, including planned investigations, procedures and treatment. | required |
| Person completing record | The details of the person who filled out the record. | mandatory |
| Distribution list | A list of other individuals to receive a copy of this communication. | required |
For full implementation the discharge information should be sent as electronic message using the NHS standard for messaging, HL7 FHIR, detailed here: Transfer of Care message specifications – NHS England
Examples
To give a clearer idea of how the standard works in practice, PRSB have created a scenario example.
