Template letter requesting medical records for a deceased person

nclude the date range you are requesting records for.

If you wish to access a deceased person’s GP records, be aware that when a person dies, their GP health records will be passed to Primary Care Support England so they can be stored for up to ten years after the death. To access a deceased’s records, you must apply to the records manager in the relevant local area. You can ask your GP for details on who you should contact.

Hospital records will be kept by the records manager at the hospital the deceased attended. Fees may apply for accessing these records. You can apply to the hospital trust’s records department.

Be as specific as possible about the records required for an initial investigation of the claim. For example, if the events leading up to the alleged negligence included an admission to hospital by way of the emergency department, immediately after which the deceased underwent surgery and then developed an infection in the post-operative period, the medical records you would probably need to request include the emergency department records (including nursing and clinical notes), operating records, anaesthetic records, daily nursing records (including temperature, pulse and respiration charts and fluid balance charts), and any laboratory reports, X-rays, etc. available in relation to the infection, etc.

You should also consider requesting any updates to those guidelines, protocols and policies, especially if the allegation of negligence took place some time prior to your making a request for records.

You will only be able to obtain the medical records of someone who has died if you are either a personal representative (the executor or administrator of the deceased’s estate) or someone who has a claim resulting from the death (this could be a relative or someone else).

You should make your relationship to the deceased clear along with the nature of the claim (see section on details about the incident below) when requesting the records.

Under this heading, you should set out brief information about the events you are concerned about, to alert the healthcare provider to where an adverse outcome has been serious, has had serious consequences, or may constitute a notifiable safety incident.