Informing patients and dealing with patient records on the closure of a practice
Where a practice closes down, ideally someone should take on the responsibility for keeping the records and letting patients have access to them. Patients have the right to copies of the records or to see the records. They do not have the right to have the original record, and should not be given original records.
Patients should be informed as to where their records will be held should they require access to them, but they should also be informed that they do not have a right to the original record.
To have someone take on the responsibility, the person closing the practice should do one of the following.
1. Try to sell the records to another practice. A rule of thumb for the value is £1 for each active record card. An active record card in a practice in an urban area is the card of a patient who has been seen in the last two years, in a rural area the period is three years. The easy way to get the number of patients seen is from the appointment diary.
If they find someone to sell the records to there should be a contract along the following lines:
a. I Mr X pay you Mr Y £z for the records of patients from the NAME OF Practice.
b. Mr X will write to the patient to inform them that their records are now available from ...
c. Mr X will give Mr Y or his representatives access to the records should they require access in respect of claims which patients might bring against Mr Y. Mr X will also require his successors in title to do the same.
2. If he cannot sell the records he should see if a local practice will take them off of his hands without paying the market price. However, in this case a token price should be paid, e.g. £1 for the records and a similar contract to the above should be entered into.
Notes on the above:
A. Although the price will be paid based on the active records, or a token amount will be paid, the buying practice takes all the records.
B. Patients should be written to as soon a practicable. In writing to the patients the buying practice will be able to sort out the active records from those of patients they are never likely to see, e.g. deceased or "gone away". Writing to patients will often remind people that they should have their eyes tested.
C. The Information Commissioner's Office has said that an advertisement would not be sufficient to inform patients as to who has their records, they should be written to individually. As an advertisement is not permissible, it is even more important to have the contract saying that the buyer will write to the patients. If the buyer will not agree to this, the seller should write, but it is preferable that the buyer writes for the reasons set out in B, above.
3. I if the practitioner cannot get another practitioner to take the records then he should approach the local health authority to see if they will look after them. The practitioner should have a written arrangement that he can get access to the record when needed, as in contract clause c, above. The health authority, or more probably the practitioner, should write to the patients to inform them as to where their records are.
4. If all the above fails, the practitioner should make arrangements to keep the records and write to the patients accordingly.
