Accessing Your Medical Record

As of 21 December 2001, patients have rights of access to health information held about them by this practice.

Accessing your health information may be as simple as requesting a copy of your latest pathology results from your medical practitioner during the course of a standard medical consultation.

However, more often than not accessing your health information will involve far more work for our staff.  We advise that the following procedure has been developed to ensure that all requests for access are dealt with as fairly and efficiently as possible:

1. All requests for access will be required to be made in writing, and addressed to the attention of the practice manager.
    
2. Requests for access will be acknowledged, in writing, within 14 days of the receipt of the request.
    
3. Applicants will be required to complete the standard consent form, and undertake to be bound by the terms of the document.
    
4. The total time between the receipt of a request for access and the time when access is granted shall not, ordinarily, exceed 30 days.  Where it is not possible for access to be granted within 30 days, you will be notified, in writing, of this and advised when access will be granted.
    
5. Where access is refused to your medical file you will be advised in writing of the reasons for refusal and your medical practitioner will contact you to discuss whether there are any means by which access may be facilitated.
    
6. You will not be permitted to remove any of the contents of your medical file from the medical practice, nor will you be permitted to alter or erase information contained in the medical record.
    
7. Where practicable, a medical practitioner will be present when access is granted to your file so that he or she may go through the contents of your file, and address any concerns that you may have in relation to the information contained within the file.  A fee will be charged in relation to this attendance.  We advise that a rebate will not be recoverable from Medicare for this service.
    
8. Should you request copies of any, or all, of the contents of your medical file, a fee will be applicable which will be relative to the size of the file. This fee will be fair and reasonable and simply cover the staff time and printing costs.
    
9. Generally patients will be required to collect their records in person.  However, in some limited circumstances patients may request that records are provided to another person.  This provision will generally only apply where the patient is unable, due to illness or incapacity, to attend the practice in person.
    
10. If you are collecting a copy of your medical record or are authorised to collect the record of another person, you may be required to provide identification.  Where possible this should be photographic identification.

Should you have any queries in relation to the above our practice staff are happy to address these for you.

Should you wish to make an application for access please approach our reception staff and they will assist you in getting under way with your application.

North Coast Surgical Suite.

This advice has been prepared by the AMA (NSW) Limited. January 2002