There are many good reasons why insurance companies may request a copy of your medical records or a Doctor’s report. For example, you may be making a claim under your medical insurance policy. In this instance, the insurance company is entitled to request access to relevant medical information to allow them to process your claim.
Lindfield Medical Centre takes the processing of your data very seriously and so we will only process data when we can be certain that there is a lawful basis for doing so.
There have been reported cases where insurance companies (or other 3rd parties) have requested information using a Data Subject Access Request and have asked for a copy of all of a patient’s medical records. In such cases, they will have the patient’s consent to do so, but we have found instances where patients have not been fully aware of the extent of the information that will be released.
Therefore, when we receive such a request, we will always contact you, verify your identity and confirm that you are fully aware of the extent of the request.
The British Medical Association has questioned whether the law allows insurance companies to use Data Subject Access Requests to obtain confidential and sensitive personal data. The General Data Protection Regulation states that only data which is sufficient for the purpose for which it is required should be disclosed and sensitive personal data which is not relevant or excessive in relation to this purpose should not be disclosed.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has recently written to the insurance industry to confirm that they consider the use of Data Subject Access rights in this way is inappropriate and an abuse of that right to access medical records. As the guardian of your medical record we are responsible for ensuring only necessary and relevant information held on your record is shared with an insurance company, however we also have a duty to comply with a Data Subject Access Request made by you as a patient and do not want to cause any delays to your application.
We feel that contacting you to discuss the request is the best way to ensure that we meet all of our lawful obligations without causing any unnecessary delay.