Access to medical records

Lets look at this another way. If your company had an in house OHA and the employee was sent there to discuss the injury and their suitability to return to their role, they would not do it with the benefit of having the employees full medical records would they?? They would write to the GP and ask specific questions relating to the employees ability to carry out specific functions of their role and would probably ask if there was any history that would preclude any elements of their role.

This would have to be done with the full knowledge and permission of the employee who would also have the opportunity under the Medical Reports Act 1988 and the Data Protection Act 1998 to see the report before it was sent to the companies OHA. In this situation it would all be perfectly acceptable to both parties.

Therefore in your scenario Katie I think it is about approach. I would have a problem with No 3 personally but I would not have a problem if handled in the above example but you would still get the desired result. Don’t take a sledgehammer to crack a nut!

Allowing anyone other than your GP access to your medical records is a very intimidating thing unless you are somebody who has been lucky enough to have never visited a doctor, it sort of invades your space. Personally I would think that if the letter written to the employees GP is thorough enough then the report that they send back would tell the OHA all they need to know from the medical records without having to see them.

It would be a shame to deny this employee the reasonable adjustments they obviously may need in order to be able to return to their role because of what may seem to be an over intrusive policy. Also you would not want to end up in a tribunal being accused of not making reasonable adjustments when the employee was just protecting their data from what might be perceived as an over zealous company. There are always more than one way to skin a cat……..boy my Idiom’s are flying tonight…….sorry!!

Patients have a right to read the report before it is sent. The employee should tell their GP that they want to see the report before it is sent to their employer and could thten request any information that is not relevant (such as the scenarios listed in earlier postings) be removed from the report before it is sent to the employer). The GP would have to decide if the information was relevant, in which case they would have to include it. They should though discuss this with the patient first to try to help them understand why the information has to be included. If the information clearly isn't relevant they are likely to agree to remove it from the report.

Well in some ways I can understand it - if you had VD as a fancy-free youth (or anything really) - would you want to risk your Employer finding out about it?

On the other hand if there's summat in the past that could affect ones recovery from an accident then the OH (and the GP) will have to take that into account.

On the basis that the medical record is ONLY provided to the OH DOCTOR then I could agree to that - the OH Doc STILL has to maintain confidentality where it's unneccessary to release the info to the Employer. So if you suffered trauma from child abuse years ago which recieved appropriate treatemt counselling etc and have recently had a bad back - it's probably totally irrelevant. I do feel also if it's sufficiently in the past and has no bearing then the GP wouldn't say anything about it. But if the bad back is a continuance or side effect of a previous problem (you know like when a person gets industrial deafness and was also in the artillery during a war - although separately identifiable things of themselves, do tend to affect the severity of the overall deafness) - so I'd expect GP to say so.

You need to clarify the issue of 'relevance' with the OH firm and hopefully re-assure the individual. But I don't know the actual legal position - surely it's the test of 'reasonablemess' ?????

Does the fact you had a kidney removed in 1982 affect your broken arm?

My organisation wants an employee to attend an occ health assessment to assess the employee's ability to return to their role following injury, and determine what adjustments are required. The employee is currently working from home but would ideally be office-based. The occ health company require the employee to consent to three things:
(1) to be examined, and findings be shared with the employer
(2) access to a medical report from the emplyee's GP / specialist
(3) access to the employee's full medical records

The employee is happy with points (1) and (2) but not point (3). The occ health company will not proceed unless consent is given to all points. What is our position? Can we consider that the employee is being obstructive and not assisting their return to work?