My wife keeps coming home having been told that medical records are not available at present, because they are in an area that has now been defined as contaminated with asbestos.
It seems that any requests made on the basis of patient safety just aren't a strong enough reason to provide timely recovery of these notes.
I have an idea.
Can we get any patient that has been told their notes are not available to just ask the DHB for them? The Citizens Advice Bureau http://www.cab.org.nz/vat/hw/leg/Pages/PrivacyAct.aspx indicates that they have to provide them to you within 20 days of asking.
Patients don't know their rights. but I am fairly certain they don't like the idea of sub-standard care that is inevitable with a discontinuity in their medical history.
The District Health Board continues to procrastinate on providing a robust solution to this critical patient safety issue. If enough people ask for their notes, then it will simply be more affordable for the DHB to put in place a system for safe recovery (such as wholesale document scanning in a positive pressure environment) of this information. They need to do this anyway (destruction of medical records is not allowed) so why not do it as early as possibly to avoid the predictable risks of not having these?
- Lee Paterson
