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Access to Records

Access to Health Records under the Data Protection Act 1998

Below is background information regarding your rights under the Data Protection Act 1998 in relation to requesting access to your health records, along with a form to assist you to make your request.

The Data Protection Act 1998 gives every living person, or an authorised representative, the right to apply for access to health records. A request should be made in writing (this includes email) to the data controller at the NHS organisation where your records are held. Therefore, if you require access to your hospital or GP records, please contact the hospital or GP Practice where you were treated.

For Community based records please complete this form.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 (Fees and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2000, you may be charged a fee to view your health records or to be provided with a copy of them. The maximum permitted charges are set out in the tables below.

To provide you with a copy of your health record the costs are:

Health records held totally on a computer: up to a maximum of £10
Health records held in part on computer and in part manually: up to a maximum of £50
Health records held totally manually: up to a maximum of £50

All these maximum charges include postage and packaging costs.

To allow you to view your health record (where no copy is required) the costs are:

Health records held totally on a computer: up to a maximum of £10
Health records held in part on computer and in part manually: up to a maximum of £10
Health records held totally manually: up to a maximum of £10 unless the records have been added to in the last 40 days in which case viewing should be free.

We are not obliged to comply with your access request unless we have sufficient information to identify you and to locate the information held about you.

Once we have all the required information, and fee, where relevant, your request should be complied within 21 days, in exceptional circumstances where it is not possible to comply within this period you will be informed of the delay and given a timescale for when your request is likely to be met.
In some circumstances, the Act permits the data controller (Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT) to withhold information held in your health record. These rare cases are:

where it has been judged that supplying you with the information is likely to cause serious harm to the physical or mental health or condition of you, or any other person, or,
where providing you with access would disclose information relating to or provided by a third person who had not consented to the disclosure, this exemption does not apply where that third person is a health professional involved in your care.

When making your request for access, it would be helpful if you could provide details of the periods and parts of your health record you require. Although this is optional, it will help save NHS time and resources, and may reduce the costs of your access request.
If you are using an authorised representative, you need to be aware that in doing so they may gain access to all health records concerning you, which may not be relevant, If this is a concern, you should inform your representative of what information you wish them to specifically request when they are applying for access.