Accessing Your Health Records
This information sets out your legal right to see your health records and any medical reports made about you for an insurance company or an employer. However, it does not give a full explanation of the law. If it does not answer all your questions, you can get more detailed guidance from Eastern Health and Social Services Council about your rights as a patient in general.
GP practice staff will keep personal information about your health strictly confidential. The Data Protection Act 1998 gives you the right to see personal health information about yourself. This Act aims to protect your personal privacy. Personal information includes records held by GPs, hospitals and health professionals.
Protect public money - Fees
Gaining access to public information is your right and the practice respects that. There is no fee for an initial request for medical record information.
However, requests do cost the practice time and money to respond to. This is public money and we need to make sure it’s spent responsibly. We may charge a small fee to cover additional administration costs if you make a request for the same information more than once, unless the information has changed a lot.
It is important that you don’t submit frivolous or trivial requests.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) state that you should not make requests as a way of ‘punishing’ a public body if you think they have done something wrong. If you do any of the above, the public body could consider your request vexatious and refuse to action it.
Corrections
If any information about you is incorrect or misleading, you are entitled to have it corrected or removed. If the GP agrees with you, it must be corrected. If the GP refuses your request to amend your record, you can ask the Information Commissioner to consider whether inaccurate information can be corrected or removed.
Viewing your medical records online
The My Care portal gives you greater control of your healthcare through personalised and secure online access to specific parts of your medical records.
Through My Care you can view your personal information online, such as:
- medications
- appointments
- some test results
It is free and optional.
You can continue to interact with healthcare services in the usual way, such as letters and phone calls.
My Care does not hold significant historical information or information from your GP practice.
To sign up for My Care visit:
Accessing someone else's records
If you are applying for health records on behalf of someone else, you will need to:
- be acting on their behalf with their consent
- have legal authority to make decisions on their behalf (power of attorney)
- have another legal basis for access
You should be aware that having power of attorney does not provide you with an automatic right to someone else’s medical records.
Other factors, including the best interests of the patient, need to be taken into account before a decision can be made.
Accessing children’s medical records
If you are accessing children's information, you may need to confirm that you have parental responsibility.
Professionals may deem a child to have capacity to consent, even if they are under 16 years of age, and consent may be requested from children.
Accessing a deceased person's medical record
To access the health records of someone who has died, you need to apply to the practice or Health Trust under the Access to Health Records (NI) Order 1993(external link opens in a new window / tab).
Due to a duty of confidentiality that remains after a person’s death, access can only be provided in limited circumstances.
If you wish to access health records of someone who has died, please check with the practice in the first instance as the medical record may not have been returned to the Trust, depending on when you request the information.
The Access to Health Records (Northern Ireland) Order 1993
Topics:
This Order has been repealed to the extent that it now only affects the health records of deceased patients. It applies only to records created since 30 May 1994.
The Order allows access to:
- the deceased’s personal representatives (both executors or administrators) to enable them to carry out their duties
- anyone who has a claim resulting from the death
However, this is not a general right of access, it is a restricted right and the following circumstances could limit the applicant’s access:
- if there is evidence that the deceased did not wish for any or part of their information to be disclosed
- if disclosure of the information would cause serious harm to the physical or mental health of any person
- if disclosure would identify a third party (that is, not the patient nor a healthcare professional) who has not consented to that disclosure
As with the Data Protection Act, a medical professional may be required to screen the notes before release.
Under the Order, if the record was made during the 40 days preceding the access request, access must be given within 21 days of the request.
Where the record concerns information which was recorded more than 40 days before the application, access must be given within 40 days, however, as with the Data Protection Act 1998, organisations should endeavour to supply the information within 21 days.
No fee may be charged for providing access to the information if the records have been made, amended or added to in the 40 days before the application is made.
The fee which may be charged where all the records were made more than 40 days before the application is made is that prescribed under section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998 - the maximum fee which can generally be charged under this provision is currently £10 (see the Data Protection (Subject Access) (Fees and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2000).
Where a copy is supplied, a fee not exceeding the cost of making the copy may be charged.
The copy charges should be reasonable, as the doctor or organisation may have to justify them. If applicable, the cost of posting the records may also be charged.
Records management
Deceased persons medical records are stored in the secure records room, until picked up by a Trust Courier. The necessary registration information is detailed via registration links.
Medical Records of Deceased persons are returned to the Trust as per their procedure. The records can be retrieved by the practice if needed. Data Protection Act timescales apply.
This applies to records in all formats.
Further Information
ICO-Information for the Public