You have a right of access to your health records

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The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) May 2018 gives you the right to access information held about you. This right applies to your health records. Under Recital 63, the GDPR recommends that, where possible, “the controller (in this case, the practice) should be able to provide remote access to a secure system which would provide the data subject (our patients) with direct access to his or her personal data.”

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Online Access:

 

This is the best way for every patient to have full access to their medical records - at any time from any computer, smart phone or tablet.

 

From November 2023 all users of the NHS App will automatically be given access to their records from the date that service is made live.

If you want up-to-date access to your records sooner - or if you want to see historical data - the easiest way is to sign up for online access. This gives you electronic access to your own information held by us and also enables you to order repeat medication and make doctor appointments (subject to availability) and keep track of test results etc

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You can access this information 24/7 from any computer and many hand-held devices such as smart phones/tablets etc. Additionally, you can grant time-limited access to any third party (such as insurance companies when you apply for a policy). 

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See the relevant page for more detail about this and how to apply for online access.

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Written Request:  

 

You can make a written request to the NHS organisation where you are being, or have been, treated. In the case of Willerby and Swanland Surgery, please address your request to the Practice Manager. You should give your full details in order that information about you may be located and tell us what you want to see (for example information from a certain date or a particular episode).

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You will need to allow us time to prepare the information and this will routinely be within one month - however, where the request is complex or numerous, we may need to extend the deadline to three months - however, we will still respond to the request within a month and if necessary explain why the extension is necessary

In most cases there will be no charge for copy information although we reserve the right to charge an administration fee for excess paper records production or multiple requests for records.

It is now so much easier to view your own records on 'phone, laptop or tablet that we feel we should encourage all our patients to have regard to the environment and not ask for printed records. 

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Further Information

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See below for details of our data subject access procedure. This shows the process we will follow to ensure we comply with our responsibilities.

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We believe that confidentiality is very important. Please speak to the practice if you need more information or if you have any concerns about the confidentiality of your information.

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Data Subject Access - Request Procedure

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In general, once we have received a request from the patient we will process that as soon as practical and within one month.

If the request is from a third party on behalf of a patient we will need to verify the consent and patient identity and that the amount of detail/information being requested is correct. Once this has been verified we will process the request.

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For online access requests we will need to verify the patient identity by way of photo ID and address verification. Online access rights are usually able to be processed at the time of ID verification and only at times of high demand would this need to be delayed.

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The following flow chart gives an overview of our process.

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Sometimes the doctor may decide to withhold information in your record from you.This only happens when the information is about other people, or where it is felt you could be caused harm