Requesting copies of your records

A request by a patient, or a request by a third party who has been authorised by the patient, for access to records under the GDPR (and DPA 2018) is called a Subject Access Request (SAR). If you want to see your health records, or wish to have a copy, please complete a Practice Subject Access Request Form (below) and return it to us. Contact will, subsequently, be made by the Practice to arrange a time for you to come in and collect or read them. You do not have to give a reason for wanting to see your records and there is no charge for this service. You will however be required to produce proof of identity before being allowed to read/collect them.

The Practice has up to 28 days to respond to your request. If additional information is needed before copies can be supplied, the 28-day time limit will begin as soon as the additional information has been received.

The 28 day time limit can be extended for two months for complex or numerous requests where the data controller (usually your Practice) needs more time to collate and supply the data. You will be informed about this within 28 days and provided with an explanation of why the extension is necessary.  Please consider that SARs can be time consuming and costly on Practice resources.  Large amounts of data may be copied to a CD disc to save paper wastage.

Patients will be expected to collect their records from the Practice, we cannot post them due to data security risks and the cost of postage on the Practice.  We also have restrictions on the size of a file we are able to email. The Practice has an obligation under the GDPR and DPA2018 to ensure that any information provided for the patient can be verified, therefore ID is required on collection.

Please note, from 01/08/2022 paper records are stored securely off site. It is not standard practice to retrieve records for SAR purposes, all significant medical history is added to your electronic record when it arrives at the Practice. This process is called summarising, and means that your electronic record will contain all relevant historical data and this is used in the production of a SAR. As electronic records systems have been in place for many years, we find that most patients born after approximately 2000 do not have any paper records, and that usually 20+ years of electronic data is sufficient for most purposes.

SAR Request Form