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Is it right to pay for medical infomation?...
LostInLimbo
Member Posts: 3 Listener
I only have a small doctors letter as evidence in my paper hearing and even that cost me thirty pounds to acquire. I would like more evidence to supply to the courts like my medical history and records, but am afraid of what the cost would be, why do i have to pay for my own medical information to begin with is this right?
Replies
Requesting Your Medical Records
If you want to view your health records, you may not need to make a formal application. Nothing in the law prevents healthcare professionals from informally showing you your own records. You can make an informal request during a consultation, or by phoning your GP surgery or hospital to arrange a time to see your records.
Formal requests under the Data Protection Act
Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have a legal right to apply for access to health information held about you. This includes your NHS or private health records held by a GP, optician or dentist, or by a hospital.
A health record contains information about your mental and physical health recorded by a healthcare professional as part of your care.
If you want to see your health records, you don't have to give a reason.
Applying for access to your health records
Depending on which health records you want to see, submit your request in writing or by email to:
This is known as a Subject Access Request (SAR).
You can ask for a range of dates or all of your records
The health records manager, GP or other healthcare professional will decide whether your request can be approved. They can refuse your request if, for example, they believe that releasing the information may cause serious harm to your physical or mental health or that of another person.
Under the Data Protection Act, requests for access to records should be met within 40 days. However, government guidance for healthcare organisations says they should aim to respond within 21 days.
You may have to pay a fee to access your health records so ask if there is a charge before you apply to see them.
Charging for medical records
The Data Protection (Subject Access) (Fees and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2000 sets out the fees a patient may be charged to view their records or to be provided with a copy of them. These are summarised below:
To provide copies of patient health records the maximum costs are:
All these maximum charges include postage and packaging costs. Any charges for access requests should not be made in order to make a financial gain.
To allow patients to view their health records (where no copy is required) the maximum costs are:
Note: if a person wishes to view their health records and then wants to be provided with copies this would still come under the one access request. The £10 maximum fee for viewing would be included within the £50 maximum fee for copies of health records, held in part on computer and in part manually.
It took me a while to find this, but here we are.
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/employment/fees/medical-records
It seems that existing records have to be provided to the patient free of charge under the new general Data Protection Regulations, but if you ask for a letter to be written for a specific non-NHS reason, then a charge can still be made.
Does anyone else have experience of this?
Gill_Scope
Think im in the minority though, sadly
52% of disability claims succeed without medical evidence. That speaks for itself.
Can't completely agree with that. I certainly agree that there isn't a lot of point in offering pages and pages of appointment letters or vaguely worded letters.
But very often and sadly, people are not believed without there being a doctor's letter confirming their degree of difficulty, say with walking or for example that work preparation would be stressful and would represent a further risk to their health.
Some doctors including specialists really know what helps. Some understand that benefit issues are adversely affecting health, and they write targeted letters that seal the deal. Not always though, as you say.
(I felt I had to write my take on this).
Gill_Scope
There may be some merit on planning and following a journey for people with learning disability and mental ill health but not for other conditions such as sensory impairment because the doctor only knows what they would expect the problems to be for a given condition rather than a person’s lived experience. Where a medical professional does know the exact details it’s not because they’ve seen it it’s because the claimant told them. Caselaw has held that where a medical professional does no more than repeat what they’ve been told it’s not necessarily given weight as medical evidence (because it isn’t) but it can add credibility to the evidence of the claimant because it’s saying “I don’t know because I haven’t seen it but it does seem likely”.
When it comes to daily living pretty much the same applies. No medical professional sees you cook, wash, budget, form relationships and so on. Again the exceptions would be mental ill health and learning disability. So, for PIP, DLA and AA it’s of very limited use indeed unless it addresses a specific thing in dispute like diagnosis or prognosis.
For ESA it’s slightly different. The focus is on repetition, safety and the context of work. Medical evidence on the latter especially could be entirely speculative but truly helpful.
Something you mentioned above completely resonated with me I have literally just had my PIP award letter through and although it went ok I was shocked to have my Mobility component dropped to standard and I believe it was based on the 10 meter walk from there waiting room to the assessment room I requested my assessment report and reading through it it pretty much backs up what I think I have posted more fully my story on this board if you or Gill would care to take a look at it It would be appreciated
Thank you
Stan
The fact that the assessment starts at the door, or in the car park, is a separate issue. It is definitely the case.
Gill_Scope
I understand fully where you're coming from but I think the counter balance to that is that
- 52% of claims succeed without medical evidence.
- people often experience massive frustration because they put in tonnes of medical evidence but no-one tells them that it's often of little value if not directed to things that are at issue rather than things which are not. Loads of threads on here expressing exactly that frustration.
- people generally don't know what their medical evidence is saying beyond "I definitely have x" when that's usually not in dispute. Nowadays it's as common to see evidence put in which is detrimental to a claim as it is to see stuff that helps. A simplistic message that all medical evidence is good and should be submitted is potentially dangerous. A realistic assessment is required.
- I would never say to not use any medical evidence. I have said that it needs to be focused on gaps in evidence and there are a couple of examples where it will be essential because of lack of insight but ultimately detailed anecdotal examples are what gets you the benefit in the majority of cases.
I'll leave it there!
Gill_Scope