Medical Record Transfers

St Clair Medical Practice

Your Medical Records

Your medical records are confidential documents. It is the policy of St Clair Medical Practice to maintain the security of personal health information at all times and to ensure that this information is only available to authorised members of staff and your information is securely stored. 

Your medical records ar retained for the full legal retention period, which is:

• 7 years from the date of last entry for adults
• until the patient is 25 years old for records of children.

If you would like more information about how your information is handled, please read our Privacy Policy.

We charge a resonable administrative fee for full electonic medical records. Health Summaries can be provided for free as well as you can access a digital summary of your healh including prescriptions & dispensed medicines, immunisation history, hospital discharge summaries and pathology and diagnostic imaging reports through My Health Record.

Electronic Medical Record Transfer Fees

Full record transfers attract an administrative fee as follows:

• Full Medical Record Transfer (Electronic): $60
• Full Medical Record Transfer (Practice-supplied USB): $70
• Full Medical Records (Hard Copy): $50 for up to 40 pages; $1 for each additional page
• Health Summary & Recent Investigations - Free

Please note:

• For cyber-security and data-protection reasons, we cannot accept patient-supplied USBs as external USB devices cannot be safely connected to our clinical systems. 
• Full medical records are very large in size and cannot be sent as attachments to emails
• Upon the receipt of a valid request for Medical Record Transfer and receipt of payment, we will send your Medical Records electronically to your new practice via a secure file-sharing link.
• Please allow up to 30 days from the date of request and payment for records to be sent.

Health Summary - Free of Charge

Before requesting a full medical record transfer, please consider whether a Health Summary will meet your needs:

• A Health Summary includes current medications, conditions, immunisations and recent investigation reports
• This is free of charge and is usually all your new GP requires, particularly if you will be seeing the same GP at another practice
• If you require a particular item from your record, such as a specialist report, discharge summary, imaging or pathology report or other specific correspondence we are very happy to provide this individually, now or at any point in the future, so that you can avoid paying for a full record transfer

My Health Record - Accessible via MyGov

Through My Health Record, you can access a digital summary of your health information including: 

• Prescriptions & dispensed medicines
• Immunisation history
• Hospital discharge summaries 
• Pathology and diagnostic imaging reports.

My Health Record allows you to:
Share with providers - You can share your health information easily with doctors, hospitals, and other providers

• Faster access to results - Pathology and imaging reports become available quicker
• Manage your health informattion - Add notes, view history, and control privacy settings

Our aim is to help patients avoid unnecessary costs. However, if you prefer a full record transfer, we will always provide one upon request.

Questions

For any questions related to your medical records, call the practice or email records@stclairmedicalpractice.com

Policy Review

This policy will be reviewed regularly to ensure it remains current with operational, legal and accreditation requirements. Updates will be published on our website.