I am fairly confident that I have mde this point before, but I think
it is worth making again, and seems to me to be consistent with the
informal opinion given by Graham Ross. I would recommend that the
entire records for a patient who is no longer registered with a GP
should be be retained off line and accessible only by manual
intervention by a clinician (his duly authorised deputy). My
argument is that the extent to which such data might be relevant in
future is unpredictable, that the costs of retaining it in this
form are very small, and that the risks to patient confidentiality
are also very small.
Mike Wells
> Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 08:01:07 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: lurking lawyers
> Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
> [log in to unmask] wrote:
> >
> > While we have a lawyer on the net (which I like, is not preventable, and it
> > is better to hear from people than not be aware they are there) how about a
> > point which arose a while back:-
> >
> > If a patient asks for an item of information to be erased from their
> > records, what happens if they later come back to claim injury has occurred
> > because that informatin would have been critical in avoiding an error in
> > managing them?
> >
> > --- OffRoad 1.9n registered to Adrian Midgley
> >
> > ----------------------
> > Dr Adrian Midgley GP Exeter
> > [log in to unmask]
> > Fax 01392-436105
> > ----------------------
>
> Adrian
>
> I may be wrong (and have not looked up the Access to Health records Act
> which provides this right) but I thought the patient could only require
> deletion of something that was incorrect or irrelevant to treatment. If
> so, then you beg the whole question.
>
> I would say no defence to negligence claim if the relevance of the
> information as an aid to diagnosis or treatment in the future ought to
> have been apparent at the outset. The doctor should have refused to
> delete, explaining why, and forced the patient into the next step under
> the Act or to drop the request.
>
> Graham
>
==========================================================
Professor Mike Wells
Department of Physics, The University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
Phone: 0113-233-2339 E-Mail [log in to unmask]
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