Your Family's Medical History
When somebody dies, their medical record does not die with them. The law gives certain family members a right to ask for it, and almost nobody knows that.
We are planning to offer this as a service. It is not open yet. If you want it, leave your name and we will tell you when it is.
The Right Almost Nobody Knows About
Most people assume a medical record is sealed the moment its owner dies, or that asking for one means a solicitor and a fight. Neither is true. Section 3(1)(f) of the Access to Health Records Act 1990 gives the deceased person's personal representative, and anyone who may have a claim arising out of the death, a right to apply for that record.
Since 2018 there has been no fee for it either. The application itself is free, and it is the reading of what comes back that is hard: decades of consultation notes, hospital letters, test results and handwriting, arriving as a pile of paper or a disc, about a person who is no longer there to explain any of it.
That is the part we would do. It is the same work we already do on living clients' own records, pointed at a different record and a different reader.
Why People Ask
A Question of Inheritance
A parent died young and nobody in the family can say precisely what of. A consultant has asked whether something runs in the family. The answer is in a record that exists, and that nobody has read.
Settling an Estate
Executors are asked for medical evidence more often than they expect: by an insurer assessing a claim, by a coroner, or by a family that wants to understand what the last year of an illness actually involved.
Filling in the Family Tree
Census returns, certificates and parish registers give names and dates. A medical record is the one document that says what a life was actually like, and no genealogy service sells it.
Ten Years, and Then It May Be Gone
This is the part we would rather you knew before you register than after you had hoped.
The NHS retention schedule holds a GP record for ten years after the patient's death. After that it can be destroyed, and a great many are. So for a parent who died in the last few years there is very likely a record to ask for. For a grandparent who died in the 1980s there is very likely not, whatever else survives in an archive.
Ten years is a floor rather than a guarantee in either direction: some records are held longer, and we will not know which until we ask. But if the person you are thinking about died recently, the clock is the reason to put your name down now rather than to come back to it in a few years.
Who Is Allowed to Ask
Narrower than most people expect, and worth reading before you register rather than after.
- ·The personal representative. The executor named in the will, or the administrator where there is no will. In practice that means a grant of probate or letters of administration, which is a document rather than a relationship.
- ·Someone who may have a claim arising out of the death. A real route, and a narrower one than it sounds. It is not a general family entitlement, and we would not encourage anybody to lean on it who does not already know that it applies to them.
Being the closest surviving relative is not, by itself, an entitlement under this Act, however unfair that feels. Nor does the Act open the whole record: it allows a record holder to withhold information the deceased gave in the expectation that it would stay private, and information that identifies somebody else. A record can come back with parts missing, and if that happens we would tell you so rather than paper over the gaps.
None of this is legal advice, and we would not be acting as anybody's legal representative. It is the shape of the thing, told plainly, so that you can decide whether registering is worth your time.
What This Would Not Cover
- ·A living relative's record. Your mother's record is hers, and the only route to it is her own request. We can help her make it, today, through the ordinary service.
- ·A birth family's medical history, for anybody adopted. An adopted adult has a right to their own birth records, and an adoption file sometimes holds a little health information. There is no right of access to a birth relative's medical record, and we will not pretend otherwise.
- ·What you have inherited. We would tell you what a record says: the diagnoses, the dates, the results, the letters, in order and in plain English. What that means for your own health is a conversation for you and your own doctor, and we would be wrong to have it for you.
- ·A record that no longer exists. See the ten-year point above. Nobody can produce a file that has been destroyed.
Put Your Name Down
This is a register of interest, not a booking. Nothing is requested, nothing is charged, and nothing is reserved. What it does is tell us how many people want this and what they want it for, which is what decides whether we build it and in what order. You will hear from us when it opens in the coming months, and if you ask for a call we will arrange one.
You Are on the List.
A confirmation is on its way to your inbox. If it does not arrive in a few minutes, please check your spam folder. You will hear from us again when the service opens, and not before unless you asked for a call.
If this keeps happening, reach us on WhatsApp or email [email protected] directly.
What You Can Do Today
One thing worth saying, because it is the commonest reason a family cannot answer a question about its own health: the person best placed to fill in a family history is usually still alive, and their own record is available to them right now.
If what you actually want is a history your children will be able to read, that starts with a living record rather than a dead one.
Questions About the Register
Can I order this now?
No. This one is not built yet, and we would rather say so than take an order we cannot fill. Registering costs you an email address and gets you a message when it opens in the coming months.
What will it cost?
We do not know yet, and a number invented before the work is scoped would be a number we later had to take back. What we can tell you is that the application to the record holder is free by law, so whatever we charge will be for the reading, the transcription and the writing up, exactly as it is on the service we already run.
I only have a name and a rough date. Is that enough?
For the register, yes. A rough year is all we are asking for, and you can leave even that blank. What an actual application would need is more, including evidence that you are entitled to apply, and that is one of the things we will explain properly when the service opens rather than sketch at you now.
What happens to my details in the meantime?
They sit on the register, in the UK, and they are used for one thing: telling you when this opens. They are not sold, not shared and not added to any other mailing. Ask us at any time and we will delete them. The Privacy Notice sets out how long the register is kept.