Data Protection Act: Subject Access to Personal Health Information (DA 8523): DHSS Consultation Paper

Increasing involvement of users in health service planning has led to a movement towards patients having more information about their care. Some have advocated patients having access to their medical records and this is now a statutory right. There has been concern as to whether this is suitable in mental health. An addition or alternative to access to medical notes is a client held record which might increase the patient's feeling of autonomy while also improving communication and compliance. In studies on access most patients and staff have found this beneficial. Client held records have also been positively received in the few studies reported but more evaluation in routine practice Is needed.

Section: Access To Records For People With Mental Illnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Commentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to records and client held records for people with mental illness

Laugharne

Stafford

1996

“…Before the Act was formulated, the Royal College of Psychiatrists had argued for a total exemption of psychiatric patients from access on the grounds that psychiatric records contained Information that was more sensitive and con fidential than other medical records, that psy chiatric patients might be a more vulnerable group, and that psychiatric records contained more third-party information (Priest, 1986). Although favourable empirical studies of psy chiatric patients given access (Stein et al, 1979: McFarlane et al, 1980Roth et al, 1980: Miller et al, 1987Parrot et al 1988;Essex et al, 1990: Price et al, 1990Bernadt et al, 1991;Kosky & Burns, 1995) far outnumber the unfavourable (Altaian et al, 1980, Sergeant, 1986 these uncontrolled studies do not compare psychiatric patients with other patient groups.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to health records: psychiatric patients and patients with diabetes compared

Jha

Bernadt²,

Brown³

et al. 1998

Thisstudy was undertaken to assess whether psychiatric patients respond more adversely to reading their own records than non-psychiatric patients. Seventy-three psychiatric out-patients and 84 out-patients with diabetes were posted their main clinical summary with a questionnaire about it. For seven of the eight questions, more than 70% of both patient groups gave favourable ratings. However, the psychiatric patients gave significantly less favourable responses than the patients with diabetes on five of the eight questions. Fourteen of 73 (19%) psychiatric patients were upset by reading the clinical summary about themselves compared with four of 84 (5%) patients with diabetes.

“…Such information may be less freely volunteered if informants have the perception that patients may later see it written in their notes. On this basis the Royal College of Psychiatrists (Priest, 1986) recommended against the legislation of a general right of access, preferring instead the existing informal arrangements. However, the Act is now with us and we shall have to develop systems to enable access to third party information to be limited as the law demands.…”

Section: Commentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will the information recorded in psychiatric notes change when patients have the right to read them?

McShane¹,

Rowe²,

Julier

1992

Psychiatric patients have had the right to see their notes from 1 November 1991. The ‘Access to Health Records Act (1990)’ makes provision for certain parts of the record to be exempt, including information which may cause serious mental or physical harm to the patient or anyone else. In addition, patients should not have access to information given by third party informants unless appropriate consent has been obtained. The legislation only applies to records made after 1 November 1991. It does not cover informal arrangements where written application for access is not made.