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The Access to Health Records Act: what difference does it make?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Robert E. Butler  and
Dasha E. Nicholls
Robert E. Butler
Affiliation:
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Dasha E. Nicholls
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University College Hospital and Middlesex School of Medicine, London W1N 8AA
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The Access to Health Records Act came into force on 1 November 1991. This legislation allows patients access to their written medical records (access to computerised records is covered by separate legislation). Concerns have been expressed about the implications of this Act for staff and patients, particularly in psychiatry. These concerns have included detrimental effects on patients exposed to their notes and the restrictions it could place upon staff in recording speculation or subjective opinion. We report the following findings: staff attitudes to the new legislation including awareness of the Act, evaluation of the Act as useful or detrimental and the Act's implications on clinical practice.

Type
Original articles
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , April 1993 , pp. 204 - 206
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

References

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