Please read this information carefully: it is very important to understand how your data may be used.
In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. This request should be made by completing the form here:
Subject Access Request (SAR) – Hornchurch Healthcare
Commonly, we have receive a letter from a third party (insurance or legal representatives) requesting release of your entire GP record, or a significant part of it, directly to them. These requests are made, on your behalf, as a Subject Access Request (SAR) under the Data Protection Act 2018. We will deal with these requests as if you had made it directly.
In accordance with the principles of the Act, our policy is not to release the GP record to anyone but the patient. It is your subject access right, and no-one else’s. We are under no obligation to release the information to anyone else but you.
We will provide your record as a pdf document as we believe that this provides you with a straightforward way by which you can easily determine:
- what information (if any) you wish to share with any third parties, and
- what information you do not wish to share
We would strongly urge you to read through your GP record, so that you are aware of the very detailed and sensitive information that it contains. It is for you to determine what information, if any, from your GP record you wish to share.
You will now be in control of your medical information.
Please note that the information we release to you might contain medical history about your family that you have provided directly (to the surgery or other medical organisations). We would ask you to bear this in mind when considering what to disclose, from your supplied record, to any third party.
There will be a very large amount of very personal and sensitive information in your GP record that has no relevance whatsoever to your legal or insurance matter, and you are under no obligation to forward on your entire GP record – or, indeed, any information – to a third party as a result of your subject access request, even if you have signed a “consent form” or “form of authority”.
It is a criminal offence, under Section 184 of the Data Protection Act, for an organisation to ask, “invite”, “request”, require, compel, or coerce you into providing them with all, or any, of the medical information that you have received as a result of a subject access request. In addition, to require an individual to exercise their subject access rights and to supply their heath records to an organisation will render a term or condition of contract as void (s.185 DPA 2018).
If you feel that you are being forced into releasing any of your medical information, from the record that we have provided you with, to a legal organisation then you are entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as well as the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
Sections 184 and 185 of the DPA 2018 afford you important protections and safeguards for your confidential medical information which would be bypassed, to your detriment, were we to disclose your SAR directly to your legal representative, or any other third party.
Please also be aware that if you are a claimant in a legal matter, then it is very likely that some or all of the information that you may choose to provide to your solicitor will be disclosed to the defendant’s solicitor as well (i.e. “served” on the other side).
Please note that we offer an established, alternative, lawful, and fair way – the appropriate legal framework – for the organisation to receive relevant medical information about you in connection with this legal matter.
Should you, or any third party on your behalf, request another copy of the SAR from us, following a first request, we are entitled to charge for doing so. We would encourage you to keep a full copy of the record that we provide you with, at all times, in order that you can:
- disclose any or all of it to a third party for medical purposes
- disclose any or all of it to a third party for any purpose
- produce it, in its entirety, if required to by the court, in the course of your claim
- facilitate engaging a new legal representative, should you wish to or have need to
without needing to request that costly second copy from us.
If you do decide to send some, or all, of your medical record to a third party, then we would urge you to do so securely by recorded delivery (e.g. Post Office Signed For™) or encrypted electronic messaging.
Please do take care of the records that you will hold – it will be your responsibility to ensure that they are kept secure.
We will inform you as soon as your records are ready. This will be within 28 days of the request.
On some occasions (for patients who are not well known to us already or are recently registered) we may ask for ID before releasing records. Please bring 2 forms of ID with you and please note that there is no charge (either to you or to the organisation requesting your GP record on your behalf) for this.
We are committed to helping you exercise your information rights, and we trust that you are satisfied with how we respond to your request; but if not then please do contact us; alternatively, as you are the data subject, you can contact the Information Commissioner directly – details at www.ico.org.uk
If you wish to speak to a member of the team about medical records, please contact Sean Brennan, Business manager on Monday or Thursday 12-4pm.