Police access to records

The Police occasionally request access to and information from a GP Practice clinical records. These request must be taken seriously and a formal process should be documented and followed. There is an excellent short guide here that sets out the various options and questions you should be considering.

The BMA have an interesting case study here relating to a serious crime and showing how you may release information without consent from the patient under certain circumstances. There are a further number of Police scenarios discussed here which all go to show the care that needs to be taken around these issues.

In the Humberside Police area a request for access to a patient record should be made on the correct form which has been amended in May 2020 to update to GDPR and is called Request to external organisation for the disclosure of personal data to the Police Under Schedule 2 Part 1 Paragraph 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR Article 6(1)(d).