Accessing medical records

[geek84]

Good Morning Folks

I am a male in my 50s and have had health issues from birth. A few years ago, I managed to get a record of my medical history from my doctor. However, there are lots of medical terms and hand written notes that I cannot understand or don't know what they mean.
I contacted the doctor last year (before the virus outbreak) who said he hasn't got time to sit down and go through my medical records with me, and now of course he is busy because of Covid19 etc.

Please advise where else I could ask for help to understand my medical records .

Thank You

[Mr Pointy]

Offer to pay him for a private consultation: you may well find he has time.

[Cudd Wudd]

I’m sure I’ve seen companies before that will review and decipher records in the context of litigation. I’ve never used one and have no connection with any such company, but you may be able to find one who would do it for you and provide a summary in layman’s terms.

I’ve had a Google and this company could be a starting point:

http://www.medicalrecordsuk.co.uk/

If you can find a company that has medically trained staff, they may well be able to do it with any caveats in place re legal action etc. Might be worth asking if you have no other options. I have no idea what they would charge though, but giving them an idea of the number of pages could help them price it up.

[thepeoplespal]

I used to summarise medical notes (not offering to decipher btw) among other things back in the day, but you could try a locum agency, they might have a tame medical notes summariser, if you only want the explanation to Google it yourself; your baby stuff will be full of Latin, (nocte, tds, bd), old terms no longer used in the medical world or even jargon between Drs that can be hurtful (NFN- Normal for Norfolk, FLB- Funny looking baby), although you'd probably need to be 60+, as a lot of that had died out by 1970s, or has been subsequently lost, when notes were transferred when people move practices frequently.

Expect to pay £50+ per hour for a summariser and £200+ per hour for an old school GP from a locum agency (try for as old as possible), deciphering medical notes is not part of the GMS contract, you might be able to get your GP to write a report for you if your willing to pay, or they might offer to pass you on to a neighbouring GP practice for a private consultation, if they think they there is a possibility of breaching their GMS/PMS/APMS contract. You should expect to pay at least £150 per hour of a GPs time.

Very few people would pay these amounts to know about their medical notes, can't remember a single instance in 11 years as a former GP practice manager, but that is what it is costing.

Good luck.

[geek84]

Thanks folks