Have you ever wondered why, when pursuing a claim for personal injury compensation, your solicitor needs to see a copy of your medical records?
In most personal injury claims, including some road traffic accident claims, it is necessary for your solicitor to obtain a full copy of your medical records. These will usually be requested from your GP and any hospital you may have attended as a result of the accident-related injuries. Indeed, it may be necessary to obtain records from any practitioner who has provided you with treatment after the accident, such as a physiotherapists, counsellors etc.
So why do you need to give permission to disclose your records? The answer to this is because your records will allow your solicitor to link the accident you have had to the injury you have sustained, and to check if there are any relevant pre-existing conditions or symptoms which could impact the claim. An example of this could be if you have previously suffered from back pain, but an accident has made the pain much worse than before.
Your medical records are then passed to a medical expert instructed by your solicitor, and that expert will examine you, review your medical records, and include any relevant entries in your records in a medical report, which will then be used to value your claim and to reach settlement with your opponent.
The majority of records are now received by solicitors digitally or electronically, and are saved to the solicitor’s digital file. Occasionally hard copy records are received, and if this is the case, then your solicitor would scan them in, and retain them electronically and confidentially dispose of the hard copies. Your solicitor and the medico-legal expert have to follow strict data protection rules which are set out in the General Data Protection Act 2018, the UK GDPR Regulations and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. These rules govern how all your data, including your medical records, is received, stored and sent to parties relevant to your claim. To be quite clear, your medical records cannot be released to your solicitor or any other party without your express permission, which should be given in writing.
Who sees my records during my claim?
Once you have given your solicitor permission to request your records and they have received copies of them, they will take the time to review them to make sure that your accident details are recorded accurately, including how the accident happened, the date of accident and the injuries received. The records will then be sent to a medical agency, by secure email, and then forwarded onto a medical expert. Reviewing the records will help a medical expert to complete his medical report, and to provide an opinion on the accident-related injuries, whether there are any relevant pre-existing conditions which need to be considered, and to come to a conclusion on any potential treatment options (if required) and how long your accident-related injuries lasted for, or are likely to last for.
In certain situations in a personal injury claim, for example if court proceedings are issued, it may be necessary to disclose your medical records to your opponent’s legal representative or insurers, or even their medical expert if they have instructed one. This is because once court proceedings are issued in a personal injury claim, a claimant’s medical records become disclosable to their opponent’s representatives. However, they will also have to abide by the above regulations and ensure that your data is treated strictly confidentially.
If there is particularly sensitive information contained within your medical records that is not relevant to your claim, for example, identifiable information regarding relatives, then this information may be removed from your records, by the organisation releasing your records, before they are disclosed to your solicitor.
Your medical records will remain confidential and will never be made public. Any person/organisation that sees a copy of your records in connection with your personal injury claim will have to follow the rules of the General Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR legislation and they should never disclose records or details to others that are not connected with your claim.
If you have been involved in an accident and would like to speak to a personal injury specialist about a potential claim please call our team on 0161 696 6235.
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