Medical Records

Confidentiality & Data Protection

The Practice is registered under the Data Protection Act 1998. This means that the doctors, nurses and other staff at the surgery have a duty not to disclose information about a patient without their consent except in the most exceptional circumstances for example if the health, safety or welfare of the patient or others is at risk. We keep information about you on paper and on the computer system under the requirements of the Act.

We treat all information about patients as confidential and adopt this policy whatever the age of the patient. Please understand if we are therefore unable to divulge information to you about a patient who is a partner, family member or close friend. We can only do so if we can be sure that you are acting on the patient's instructions

Copies of Medical Records

If you require access to or a copy of/from your medical notes we will comply with your request unless the doctor believes there is a valid clinical reason for not doing so. If the rare event that this happens we will write to you explaining our reasons for not doing so.

To request access or copy(ies) you will need to:

• Put your request in writing detailing the dates to be covered and ensuring the request is signed by you (therefore no e-mails can be accepted)
• Pay our fee before the notes/copies are released. Please see our tariff for Details of our Fees

We will aim to enable access/have your copies within 10 working days of receiving your request but we reserve the right to alter this timescale in exceptional circumstances. We will require proof of identity before making records/copies available.

If you wish other people such as solicitors or insurance companies to have information/copies of your notes, you will need to complete and sign a Form of Consent (available from the Insurance company) before this can be provided.

Telephone Messages

There are circumstances in which it can be important to contact a patient urgently by telephone. If at all possible, we will not leave a message with another person or on an answerphone. However, it might be necessary to do this in order to ensure an early contact with you. Our procedures allow a member of staff to leave a message asking you to call a named person "at Milton House ". If you would not want us to do this please let us know. We will then put a note on your record to ensure your wishes are carried out.