Welcome to Ripon Spa Surgery
Prospective Records Access
A Government decree to allow all patients prospective access to their medical records is due to come into force on 1st November. This should allow all entries in the medical record from that date to be available via the NHS App or other online software and was first proposed several years ago. It has been repeatedly deferred until the clinical recording systems available in General Practice have been updated to support patient access and ensure that only information that can legally be disclosed is made available.
Unfortunately that software remains unavailable, but the Government has decided to proceed nevertheless. We have decided not to comply with the request and will not be enabling universal prospective access to the records; our reasons are given in detail below.
General Practices are legally responsible for the security of patients' records, and can be subject to criminal proceedings and face enormous fines for disclosing information that should not have been made available (for instance, information relating to anyone other than the patient themselves and any professional involved in their care). Such 'third-party' information might be in the record because it is relevant to a patient's health and care, for instance if they are caring for a partner with dementia, or their child is seriously ill. This information is appropriate to be in the notes in order to communicate the situation to other clinicians looking after a patient, but it is illegal to release any third-party information, in some cases even if the patient has told us the information themselves! The record may also contain information such as email addresses or personal phone numbers of people involved in the care of a patient, which also must not be disclosed.
Since the medical record contains not only information entered at the Surgery, but also letters and documents written by hospitals and other external sources, it is impossible for us to read and redact all this information, particularly given the intense and ongoing workforce shortages that make providing safe and timely healthcare a huge challenge at the moment; we feel that all our resources should be focused on the provision of healthcare and not the administrative work that manual redaction would entail.
We acknowledge that patients have a right to know what information is being held about them, and the law provides a robust mechanism for us to release a copy of that information (a Subject Access Request under GDPR legislation). We are also happy to facilitate online access to records on request, and will enable general online access as soon as a suitable automated system is available to ensure that we can do so without risking breaking the law.