Playbook, medical practice
Handling a request to delete or correct a medical record
This is one of the few places where the honest answer is mostly no, and saying so clearly is safer than being vague. The request is also usually two requests in one sentence, and one of them can be acted on.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for data deletion requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A medical record is one of the clearest exceptions to a general right to erasure, because health record retention periods are set in law rather than by the practice.
- The request is normally two different requests wearing one sentence, delete my record and stop sending me messages, and the second one can usually be acted on straight away.
- Where such a request lands matters, because handling it as an ordinary enquiry email is itself a data handling decision the practice will be judged on.
- Getting this wrong produces a regulator complaint rather than a bad review, which is a different class of consequence from anything else in this trade.
How it arrives
- how do i get my records deleted
- can you take me off your text messages
- i want to see everything you hold about me
- how do i correct a mistake in my notes
- can you remove my old address from your system
- who is your data protection officer
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your privacy notice as published | The version on your website, not a summary of it. The assistant should quote what patients can already read rather than paraphrase a legal document. |
|---|---|
| How a records request is made and how long it takes | The route, what identification is needed, and the timescale you commit to. This is the process most often asked about and least often described. |
| Retention as your practice states it | How long records are kept and why, in the wording you publish. Never let the assistant infer a period from general knowledge. |
| Messaging and sharing opt outs | How to stop text reminders, and any national or local data sharing scheme with its own opt out route. These are the parts that can actually be actioned. |
The reply
Health records are kept for periods set out in law, so a practice usually cannot delete them on request, and our privacy notice explains what that means here [1]. You can ask to see your record, ask for a factual correction, and opt out of text reminders, and those are three separate processes [2]. If you tell me your name and an email with what you want to do, it goes to the team who handle these requests.
The hardest part is answered first rather than deferred, because a patient who has to wait for the no will be angrier when it arrives. The request is then split into the parts that can be acted on, and the formal one is routed to the people who log it rather than treated as ordinary correspondence.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor makes a formal request, cites data protection law, or says they are making a complaint.
This needs to go to the team who handle records requests rather than stay in a chat. Leave your name, an email and what you are asking for, and I will pass it on so it is logged properly.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never confirm that a record exists for a named person.
- Never say a record has been, or will be, deleted.
- Never state a retention period or a statutory deadline that is not in your own privacy notice.
- Never take a date of birth or a record number in the chat as though it were an identity check.
Questions
- Should the assistant handle these at all?
- It should explain the routes and then hand over. The explanation saves a phone call and gets the request to the right place, which is worth more than a form that quietly collects requests nobody logs.
- What if somebody just wants the texts to stop?
- That is the actionable half and it should be answered plainly, with the route. Wrapping it up in the records answer means it gets lost.
- Does the enquiry form count as a formal request?
- That is your decision and it should be written down. Whatever you decide, the assistant should not promise a timescale the practice has not committed to.
Keep reading
- Everything for a medical practiceAdministrative questions a practice can safely automate, the symptom questions it must never touch, and how to word the refusal.
- Handling data deletion requests in generalA deletion request is a request with a clock on it, not a question. The characteristic failure is silence, so it always has to reach a person.
- Getting a patient off the chat and onto the right numberAt a practice the handover is a routing decision between three numbers, and the assistant is not the thing that routes.
- The patient wants to cancel. Is it even our appointment?A telephone slot is a call back window, not a time. What a surgery can say about cancelling, reply codes and missed appointments.
- Referred in the spring, still nothing: what a practice can answerThe wait patients ask a practice about is usually one it cannot see. Referrals, the urgent route and what may honestly be said.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.