Welsh Clinical Portal Advance Care Plan — How to Register Your ADRT Digitally

What the Welsh Clinical Portal Is

The Welsh Clinical Portal (WCP) is the central digital platform used by NHS Wales health professionals to access patient records across primary care, secondary care, and emergency services. It's maintained by Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) and acts as the single view of your clinical information — lab results, referrals, medications, and, since a May 2026 update, advance care planning documents.

The relevant feature for advance directive holders is the "Future Care Plan discussed" tab, which sits at the top of the patient record. When this flag is active, a clinician opening your record in an emergency department, on a hospital ward, or through an out-of-hours service can immediately see that you have documented future care wishes — and access the scanned documents.

This is how an ADRT written at your kitchen table reaches the hands of an emergency consultant at University Hospital of Wales at 2 a.m.

How to Get Your ADRT Onto the Welsh Clinical Portal

You cannot upload documents to the WCP yourself. The process goes through your GP surgery:

Step 1: Complete your ADRT. Make sure it meets the Mental Capacity Act 2005 requirements — specific treatment refusals, the life-sustaining treatment declaration if applicable, your signature, date, and an independent witness signature.

Step 2: Book a brief appointment or visit your GP surgery. Hand the original ADRT to the practice manager or receptionist. Explain that you want it scanned to the Welsh Care Records Service (WCRS) so it appears on the Welsh Clinical Portal.

Step 3: Ask the practice to confirm the upload. After scanning, the WCP should display the "Future Care Plan discussed" flag on your record. The practice can verify this. Some surgeries do it the same day; others may take a week or two depending on administrative workload.

Step 4: Follow up if the flag isn't active. If you check back after two weeks and the surgery can't confirm the flag is showing, ask again. The scanning process is straightforward but can fall through administrative cracks, particularly in busy practices.

What the WCP Shows to Clinicians

When a clinician opens your record and clicks the Future Care Plan tab, they see:

• A scanned image of your ADRT (the full document, including all refusal clauses and signatures)
• Any additional advance care planning documents the practice has uploaded — such as an Advance Statement of Wishes, a DNACPR form, or a registered LPA notification
• The date the documents were uploaded and when they were last reviewed

The system doesn't interpret or summarise your ADRT. It presents the raw document and lets the clinician assess whether it's valid and applicable to the current clinical situation. This is why the wording of your ADRT matters — a vague document on the WCP is just as unenforceable as a vague document in a drawer.

Limitations of the Digital Route

The WCP is a significant improvement over paper-only records, but it has practical gaps:

• Ambulance crews in rural Wales may not have reliable mobile data access to the WCP. In Powys, parts of Ceredigion, and Snowdonia, the Green Bottle scheme remains the primary emergency discovery mechanism.
• Cross-border care — if you're treated at an English hospital (common along the Wrexham–Chester and Monmouthshire–Gloucestershire corridors), English NHS systems don't automatically access the Welsh Clinical Portal. Your ADRT needs to be presented physically or uploaded separately to the English hospital's records.
• Out-of-hours GP services have WCP access, but locum doctors may not check the Future Care Plan tab unless they have reason to suspect advance documents exist.

This is why the complete approach uses both digital registration (WCP via your GP) and physical copies (Green Bottle, family distribution, copies with your LPA attorney).

What Else You Can Register

Beyond the ADRT, your GP surgery can upload:

• Advance Statement of Wishes and Preferences (the advisory companion to an ADRT — not legally binding, but considered in best-interests decisions)
• DNACPR form (the All Wales clinical form, once completed by your doctor)
• LPA registration confirmation — while the official LPA register is held by the Office of the Public Guardian, noting the LPA's existence in your GP record alerts hospital teams that a designated decision-maker exists
• My Life, My Wishes booklet — the Powys Teaching Health Board's advance care planning tool, used in some areas of Wales

Keeping Your WCP Record Current

Every time you update or replace your ADRT — after a diagnosis, a change of mind, or a routine two-year review — deliver the new version to your GP surgery for rescanning. The practice should replace the old scanned document with the new one on the WCRS.

Don't assume the old version will be automatically flagged as superseded. Explicitly ask the practice manager to remove or archive the previous scan when the new one goes up. An emergency clinician who sees two versions of an ADRT on the system may need to resolve the ambiguity before deciding how to proceed, which can delay decisions.

Our Wales ADRT planning guide includes a GP registration script — a printable sheet you hand to the practice manager that explains exactly what needs to be scanned and where it goes. It also covers the Green Bottle setup and family distribution so your ADRT is findable through every channel.

Get the complete planning kit and make your advance decision visible where clinicians actually look.

See more Wales guides →