If you have identified an issue with your medical records please contact our admin team via 01926 331401. They will log the error and ask one of our clinical team to review it. A clinician may need to discuss it with you further prior to making any potential changes to your record.
Under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), patients have a right to a copy of their medical records, generally without charge.
Producing copies of medical notes is quite labour-intensive and requires significant resource. In order to help us minimise the resource required, there are a number of options to get a copy of your medical records. The options, their associated costs to the Practice, and the advantages and disadvantages to the patient are described below.
For more information please view the Practice 'Patient Access to Medical Records Policy' (PDF, 227KB)
Option One: Online Access
If you have internet access, you can apply for online access to your medical records. The application form for this is available to download from the link below, or can be collected from reception. You will need to bring two forms of ID with the completed form.
Advantages:
- You have “live” access to your records—each time you have a new medication prescribed, a new consultation with the practice, a new allergy added, or a new blood test result, your copy of the medical records is updated with the information.
- The cost to the Practice is one-off and minimal (cost of checking your notes prior to allowing access).
- You can view your health records wherever you are, for example, if you are seeing a consultant who has a query about one of your medications you can look it up on your phone.
- If you need a new copy of your notes for another reason, you don’t have to wait a month to get it.
- Online access to your records has other advantages, the main one being it allows you to take better control of your health.
Disadvantages:
- Internet access needed
- Electronic copy of notes
- Record is a summary of notes which consists of diagnoses, immunisations and consultations.
More details and an application form can be downloaded from the links below:
Online access to medical records guide for patients (PDF, 245KB)
Online access to medical records pre-application questionnaire (PDF, 160KB)
Online access to medical records application form (PDF, 152KB)
Option Two: Electronic Records
If you were born before the year 2000, part of your medical record is likely to be on paper (“Lloyd George” notes). Prior to computerisation, Practices recorded consultations on paper notes. Now notes are electronic, and anything significant from your old paper notes is summarised and added to your electronic record. If you wish to have a copy of your notes, you can ask for just your electronic notes.
Advantages:
- This information can be sent to you by email quickly and easily.
- It is a cost-efficient way for the Practice to provide access to notes as it involves checking your notes, then the computer generates an automatic copy of the notes.
Disadvantages:
- This is not a full copy of your records (unless you were born after the year 2000) prior to that date the record is a summary only.
Download the application to access your electronic records (PDF, 264KB)
Option Three: Full copy of records (subject access request)
The final option is to request a full copy of your records, both electronic and paper. This is the option which uses the most resource in the Practice as the notes taken from the archive, checked by hand, photocopied by hand, then the full notes are checked and copies made.
Advantages:
- This is the complete version of your medical notes
Disadvantages:
- Requires a lot of resource and costly for the Practice to produce.
Please note that we can produce a 'targetted subject access request'. This is a copy of your medical record from a specific time or between two dates. It can also be your notes relating to a particular medical condition or event. This reduces the amount of time and resouce for the practice when compared with preparing a complete set of copied medical notes.
While we appreciate there are occasions when you would need a copy of your full notes, we would ask that this option is only used where it is genuinely needed over and above the other two options—please help us to help you!
If you do not require copies of all your record, we can arrange for copies between a date range. Please let use know your requirements on the application form.
Alternatively, you can view your full record or parts of it. You can make arrangements to come to the surgery and view your record with a member of staff present. Please note that this member of staff will not be a clinician and so will be unable to answer any queries of a clinical nature that you may have whilst viewing your record