legitimate relationship

legitimate relationship

A term defined in the context of the NHS Connecting for Health programme for an electronic record stored on the NHS Spine, which details the care relationship between a patient and a healthcare professional or group of healthcare professionals. It is used to restrict access so only the care professionals involved in the patient’s care can access his or her clinical information. To determine if an LR exists, the care professional must first uniquely identify the patient, which is done by tracing the patient’s demographic record on the Personal Demographics Service. Therefore a care professional needs to access to the patient’s demographics record before determining if a LR exists.