Law firms might have to pay more to access medical records
Tuesday 18th May 2010, 2:29PM BST.
A SLIDING scale of fees for access to medical records could be introduced to deal with the increasing cost of providing the service.
At present the maximum a medical practice can charge is £10.
But data protection commissioner Dr Peter Harris (pictured) said the cost to practices could often be much higher.
Dealing with these sorts of requests can involve a significant amount of work which costs far more to put together than the £10 that is allowed under the law, he said.
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Thank goodness the data commissioner has produced this guidance. Frankly, firms of advocates were abusing the system and transferring costs to the taxpayer by demanding copies of medical notes and attempting to insist that they should only pay £10.
The word is that some of them are furious now at having to pay more (the fees start at £50). The last time I looked, that would buy me approximately 17 minutes of a bog-standard advocate’s time, so it sounds a bargain to me.
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This won’t have that much of an effect on them im sure.
I’m willing to bet that the majority of civil litigation where doctors notes are required will be legally aided ( by virtue of the fact that people injured/ill enough to be persuing these claims may often be out of work, and on sickness benefits- so will be valid) so it will just be taxpayers footing the bill. Those who fund their own proceedings will have the bill passed on to them.
In the case of sucessful claim of course, the insurers would then cover the costs-(legally aided and privately) but thats assuming it is of course! I wonder how many ‘fishing trips’ there are- where it isn’t… hmmmmm
Incidentally i’m not against legal aid being used, i was just emphasising that the one group it wont hit will be the law firms
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