Do GPs let you read your notes?

[pinapplebelongsonpizza]

Hey! I know nobody can say for sure but just wondered if anyone knew.

I was discharged from hospital recently and the treatment I received was quite mixed and confusing. I wanted to read the letter sent from them to my GP surgery. I know I need to do a subject access request to get an actual copy of this, but I don’t really need that I just wanted to quickly glance it to clarify a few things.

I’ve got to go to the doctors for something else anyway later this week, do you think if I ask to see it will they let me? Or is it not really allowed and it needs to be a subject access request? I don’t want to scroll through everything, I was just going to ask if they could call up the discharge letter from the hospital so we could quickly read it and clarify a few things. Not a big deal either way, just wondered if anyone knew! Unfortunately we don’t have the nhs app in Scotland so can’t read it on the nhs app like people in England can.

It might be on your NHS app?

Clearly didn’t bother reading to the end of the post!

You should have been copied in on the letter anyway so I think your GP should be fine printing out a copy for you.

my GP would just print it or read it out to me
it might be on your app or you may be able to just email the surgery and ask for that specific letter to be sent to you

No, the GP probably won’t let you read the letter. There’s a reason there’s a process to follow, and you wouldn’t necessarily be given all of the information on your file anyway.

I work in GP surgeries. Normally you'd be copied in to any discharge letters sent from the hospital.

The GP surgery will be able to bring it up easily enough for you and a GP would probably be ok with doing that. Reception staff are not allowed to, so they would decline and say you'd need to submit a request. However a GP probably would.

BUT it can take a while for the letter to get from the hospital onto your screen. It has to be dictated by the hospital / typed up by the secretary, posted to the surgery, put in the "in post" for the practice to sort (bare in mind if it's a largely surgery they may get 100's of letters a day), then scanned on and saved to your notes.

I have known practices to sometimes have about a 3 month delay.

When I was discharged from hospital they gave me the discharge papers with all the tests done and results of scans and going forward if I needed any other treatment.

I'd ask. They definetly can.

My GP sent me to hospital a few months ago and for some reason printed off my entire medical history and gave it to me to take with me. Hospital were not interested in it so I got to keep it 😅. Didnt have to pay for it

Do they not have computers and the Internet where you work??

Most hospitals still send their mail via internal post - nothing as techy as sending it via the link/email. Its incredibly frustrating although is slowly getting better.

So the process is - consultant dictates letter, secretary types letter, letter hangs around waiting for consultant to check it, letter gets shoved on the side to go to the department that sorts the mail, letter gets put into the blue bag and eventually sent to the GP. GP receives the letter, it gets shoved in a pile waiting to be scanned onto the patient record - if whichever team does to the scanning is short staffed the scanning on of the letters becomes the least important job to be done - letter gets scanned on and sent to the GP to look at. GP makes a decision as to what, if anything needs to happen from the letter and sends a task to reception to action it.

Its an archaic and incredibly frustrating system. Why, when the GP record can now be seen by the majority of community services it cant be linked to the hospital system lord only knows!

But in answer to the OP question - when the letter is eventually received by the GP surgery there is very rarely a reason why the patient cannot see the letter (which really the consultant should have copied you in on anyway).

If it’s your hospital letter it should be the hospital giving you a copy, either at discharge or after.

Yet another thing Gps get asked that isn’t really their role.
Also be prepared that your discharge letter may have 1-2 sentences on it and none of the information you’re looking. Or it may be 5 pages long.

also the ‘quick read and clarify’ - how is the gp going to ‘clarify’ the concerns from your hospital treatment they had nothing to do with.

And it’s never quick - so in you’re 10 minute appt, you want to fully discuss/plan rx and document your original concern, PLUS open up a new system, read a letter, allow you to read a letter and then discuss clarifications and action that clarity?
That’s why it’s not feasible in 10 mins.

Id suggest ringing the hospital who wrote the letter to send it out. Then you can ask the consultant secretary to make you an appt to discuss clarity. Not an attempt at getting your gp to do someone else’s work.

That's ridiculous though. It's the OPs health information that she has a right to view.

I have had three private surgeries and the consultants secretary always emails me a copy of his letter and emails it to my surgery also. I'd be furious if i couldn't see the consultants discharge letter.

@MyKidsAreTooNoisy yep they do, but they don't send patients notes via email, it's still posting of letters, having to manually scan them in and process them.

Saw a patient today, very serious condition discovered on a CT scan 3 weeks ago. Has already had the surgery. And we still haven't even got the original CT scan letter scanned and saved into their notes yet. Can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is as a clinician!

Patient bought in their copy of letter today and told me all about it.

Bloody ridiculous, buts that's how it is.

I don't think that people fully know / appreciate all the admin involved in the running of a GP setting and why things take so long sometimes.

I think you can read it. I recently got hold of my notes (because I changed GP practice when I moved away) and discovered they had randomly reduced the number of times I had given birth. Odd.

Yes, we have computers and the internet. So what? The patient systems are not linked to GP surgeries. We could, technically, send a letter via an email. In order to do that, we need GP surgery email recorded in our system which we don’t because surgeries do not publicise their email list. So admin has to go in and Google each individual patient surgery’s details to forward an encrypted email with relevant patient info. As much as you think it isn’t, it’s actually much faster to print a letter which already has GP surgery address populated by the computer system and stick it into an envelope with a clear window for the said address. This isn’t the hard part. The hard part is someone transcribing the notes and for the GP admin to sort through the post which isn’t going to be any quicker if letters are sent electronically. Someone still has to do the job of filing them.
Unless both the surgery and the hospital subscribe to Docman where all the letters are sent through electronic records but I have only ever come across Docman in one trust.

yep they do, but they don't send patients notes via email, it's still posting of letters, having to manually scan them in and process them.
Inpatient/daycase discharge letters, and letters following outpatient appointments absolutely can be, and in many cases are, sent electronically from a hospital IT system direct to the GP IT system. It does need the right interface to be in place, may only happen for GP practices local to a hospital and may not happen in all hospitals but it definitely does happen in many cases.

The technical specs for sending various data electronically can be found here if anyone is, interested digital.nhs.uk/services/interoperability-toolkit/developer-resources/transfer-of-care-specification-versions

I always get the same letter that is sent to my GP from any hospital consultations/ appointments/ surgery.

This!

You expect the GP to just pull up the hospital discharge letter, read it with you and discuss concerns during your 10 minute appointment about another problem. Unbelievable…..

I work in a GP surgery (in England), the discharge letters from hospital to GP are really quite surprisingly vague. People can be kept in for weeks and you'll essentially just get an admission date, how you arrived at hospital, discharge date and any medication changes. Regards the reason for attending/diagnosis it can literally be as unhelpful as "attended with chest pain - diagnosed with social issue" (unhelpful as they don't say what tests were/weren't completed, how they came to this diagnosis... so when the patient reattends surgery "i've still got that pain...")

Put your request in writing to the surgery and they should get back to you. There's very few consultations/letters we'll restrict patients access to. They'll certainly be able to explain best what the process is/whether there's any charge for the admin.

The GP might well prefer that compared to your lodging a subject access request for your entire medical record. That option would mean the GP having to go through the entire thing looking for information on anyone else that should be confidential and redacting it. If they miss anything, they'll have broken the law. It can take hours if the record is long. And somehow I bet it always seems to be the long ones people request....

@pinapplebelongsonpizza

If you're in Lothian

according to NHS Lothian
If your enquiry is to do with your GP or information that you think your GP might hold, please contact them directly

Or contacting the medical secretary of the consultant she saw at the hospital.

Especially considering she wants to “clarify a few things”.

Just request a copy and ask if you can pick it up when you attend for your appointment.

Ask for a printed copy but be aware thst it often takes weeks or months for these summaries to arrive at the GP

My GP printed a hospital letter for me that I had not received.