Lost Medical Records Compensation Claims In The UK
By Marlon Madison. Last Updated 5th August 2024. Have you suffered mentally or financially because of a medical records data breach? If so, under certain circumstances, you may be able to claim lost medical records compensation. This guide will explore what this entails and when you may be able to make a data breach claim.
Paranoia, anxiety, and trust issues can arise due to a medical data breach. A future data breach may be something you worry about.
Data breach compensation can help you get your life back on track. Lost medical records compensation can compensate for the financial loss and mental struggles you’ve faced due to the data breach.
The EU GDPR was enacted into UK law via the Data Protection Act 2018. An amended version of the UK GDPR sits alongside the Act.
Talk To Us About Compensation For Lost Medical Records In The UK
Our friendly advisers are available 24/7 to offer free legal advice. You can have a chat with an adviser about your situation and whether you can make a claim.
If your claim is legitimate and strong, an adviser can connect you with a data breach solicitor from our panel to talk about No Win No Fee agreements with you.
You can contact our advisors by:
- Phoning 020 3870 4868 to discuss your experience.
- Filling in our online claims web form so we can get in touch.
- Using the live support feature you can see at the bottom of the page.
Services And Information
- Everything You Need To Know About Lost Medical Records Compensation Claims
- My Medical Records Have Gone Missing – What Does That Mean For Me?
- Compensation For A Data Protection Breach
- Medical Records Lost By GPs Or Hospitals
- Medical Data Breach Compensation – How Long Do I Have to Claim?
- My Medical Data Privacy Was Breached, What Should I Do?
- Claim For Lost Medical Records With A No Win No Fee Solicitor
- Related Medical Privacy Breach Claims
- FAQs About Lost Medical Records Compensation Claims
Everything You Need To Know About Lost Medical Records Compensation Claims
In this guide, we will first explain what the loss of medical records is and what information may be in your medical records. Next, there’ll be sections where we look at how to protect your medical records and who has access to your medical data.
Moreover, there will be a compensation table to show how psychological injuries may be valued. There will also be a section discussing what can cause this type of medical data breach.
Moreover, there’ll be sections where we explore how medical records can be lost by GPs or hospitals and how you could be affected by medical data privacy breaches. In this guide, we will then look at how long you have to claim lost medical records compensation.
In addition, there’ll be a section where we look at what a No Win No Fee agreement is and how our panel of lawyers work on this basis. Finally, there’ll be some further guides and FAQs to ensure you have as much information as possible.
Medical Records Have Gone Missing – What Does That Mean For Me?
If you are thinking, ‘my medical records have gone missing – what does this mean for me?’, we’ll discuss the subject of missing records in this section. Firstly, it’s important to understand what doctor records are. These are likely to contain your medical history.
Medical records often contain personal data, which is any information that may be used to identify a data subject. Additionally, medical information can also include special category data, which is information considered more sensitive and therefore, under the UK GDPR, requires extra protection.
If your medical records have gone missing, this could count as a type of data breach. Personal data breaches are security incidents that occur accidentally or deliberately. The incident would result in your personal information being lost, stolen, tampered with, disclosed or accessed without your permission.
The organisation that holds your medical records is known as the data controller. A data processor, however, is usually a third party that processes your personal data on behalf of the controller. If either controllers or processors are found to have committed some form of positive wrongful conduct, you might be eligible to make a claim.
However, in order to make a missing records data breach claim, it’s essential that you can prove:
- The data controller or processor committed wrongful conduct resulting in a data breach
- Your data was affected by the breach
- You suffered financial harm or psychological damage as a result of the breach
Lost Medical Records – What Could Happen?
If your medical records have gone missing, then there could be a variety of outcomes. For instance, the care you receive from medical professionals could be affected. Your medical records contain various pieces of information regarding allergies, treatment and more.
To give an example, you may have an allergy to a certain medication. If known, this will be in your medical records. A person responsible for the storage of this information losing your medical records could mean that you are prescribed medication that causes you to have an allergic reaction.
If information pertaining to any past or present illnesses or conditions goes missing, it may be seen by those who are not authorised to access it. The risk of this information becoming public could cause psychological injuries such as stress or anxiety. You could be compensated for these too.
If you want to know more, our advisors are available to answer your questions on a 24/7 basis. Get in touch today.
Statistics
If you’re considering whether you can make a lost medical records compensation claim, you’re unlikely to be alone. Statistics provided by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection watchdog, show that the health sector leads the way in reported data security incidents.
The ICO collates statistics showing data breaches that have been reported by data controllers. As you can see from the infographic below, there were 1,928 reports in 2023 from the health sector alone. This accounts for around 17% of all incidents flagged in that year.
This doesn’t mean that everyone involved in these breaches can make a claim. Your case must meet the eligibility criteria we outlined earlier in the guide. Just call us today if you’d like to find out whether you can make a data breach compensation claim.
Compensation For A Data Protection Breach
After a data protection breach, compensation may not necessarily be awarded. This is because in order to make a personal data breach claim, you have to demonstrate that an organisation’s failings led to your personal data becoming compromised and caused you financial loss or emotional harm.
Prior to the Court of Appeal, Google V Vidal-Hall (2005), you were unable to claim for psychological injuries without having suffered financial harm. However, following the landmark case, it was ruled that data breach compensation for mental health injuries may be awarded without you having to have experienced financial losses.
Any psychological harm is referred to as non-material damage. Following a personal data breach, compensation may be awarded to you if you have suffered a psychological injury, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In order to work out the data breach compensation amount you could receive for non-material damage, solicitors can use the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG). This is a publication containing compensation brackets for different types of injuries.
JCG Figures For Mental Illness
As non-material damage means the psychological harm caused by a data breach, these JCG brackets give an impression of the guidelines used for compensation reflecting this damage. Remember, however, that they are only a guide.
- Compensation addressing serious mental harm, in addition to significant material damage, could reach £250,000 or more. Please note that this is based on our experience of data breach claims and isn’t from the JCG.
- Severe psychological harm generally attracts a payout of £66,920 to £141,240.
- Moderately severe harm could lead to a payment of £23,270 to £66,920.
- Moderate emotional suffering could be compensated to the amount of between £7,150 and £23,270.
- The bracket for less severe general psychiatric damage is £1,880 to £7,150.
- A payment for severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) could range from £73,050 to £122,850.
- Meanwhile, a moderately severe PTSD guideline payout is £28,250 to £73,050.
- The suggested range for moderate PTSD is £9,980 to £28,250.
- The JCG bracket for less severe PTSD is £4,820 to £9,980.
My Medical Records Have Gone Missing – Claiming For Material Damage
Any financial loss you suffer due to a personal data breach would be referred to as material damage.
Some examples of the material damage you could be able to claim compensation for include:
- Any income you may have lost, if the breach had impacted your ability to work by causing you serious emotional harm
- Any money you may have lost to fraud or theft
If your medical records have gone missing, and you have been affected either mentally or financially you can reach out to one of our advisers to make an enquiry about a claim evaluation. This service can let you know more about your eligibility to claim, and the amount of compensation that you could be awarded.
You can reach out now for more information about a claim for lost medical records or compensation in the UK.
Medical Records Lost By GP’s Or Hospitals
Here are some examples of how GPs or hospitals can lose medical records:
- Delivering sensitive information to the wrong address: This could result in someone accessing your medical records without your consent or another lawful reason.
- Hacking: The handlers of your medical records may not have a sufficient amount of data protection in place. Insufficient IT security can make it easier for people to hack hospital records and steal your personal information.
Our advisers would be happy to discuss your case with you and figure out what your next steps may be. If you have grounds for a strong claim, they could then connect you to a lawyer from our panel to discuss No Win No Fee agreements with you.
Medical Data Breach Compensation – How Long Do I Have to Claim?
The data breach claims time limit varies. For public bodies (such as the NHS) there’s a 1-year time limit. On the other hand, it’s 6 years for private healthcare companies. Why not get in touch with our advisers who can inform you of the time limits for your particular case?
My Medical Data Privacy Was Breached, What Should I Do?
We would advise reaching out to a data breach solicitor as soon as you are able to if you have been made aware that a hospital has either lost your medical records or that a breach involving your data has taken place and you have suffered harm as a result.
A solicitor could guide you on the actions you should take, including what evidence you may need to sue for lost medical records. Evidence you could collect includes:
- Correspondence between you and the faulting party
- Payslips, bank statements or receipts to show any financial loss
- Medical records to show psychological harm
Please reach out to one of our advisers to learn more about what to do to claim medical data breach compensation if a doctor lost your medical records.
Claim For Lost Medical Records With A No Win No Fee Solicitor
As this guide has covered, under data protection legislation in the UK, medical records are given special protection due to their sensitive nature. The loss of these could cause harm, such as financial losses or stress due to a data breach. If it was caused by a failure on the part of the data processor or controller to adhere to the legislation, you could be eligible to claim.
You might be able to do this with the help a specialist data protection solicitor if you have a valid claim. Legal representation for lost medical records could be provided by a No Win No Fee solicitor using a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA). A CFA is a type of No Win No Fee arrangement.
Under the typical No Win No Fee arrangement, your solicitor:
- Won’t ask for a fee covering their services upfront.
- Or ask you to pay for ongoing costs.
- Won’t charge for their services in the event that they fail to recover compensation.
- Will take a legally capped success fee from directly from your award should they recover compensation.
Call our advisors to find out more about lost medical records compensation in the UK. They can assess your claim’s validity and if they feel like it could successfully recover compensation, they could pass you onto our panel of solicitors. Our solicitors typically work on a No Win No Fee basis.
To speak to our advisors:
- Fill in our claim online form.
- Call 020 3870 4868.
- Connect via the live chat pop-up below.
Related Medical Privacy Breach Claims
Here, we have relevant guides that could help you further.
Advice On Claims Against The NHS For Medical Negligence: Have you suffered NHS medical negligence? Our guide looks at how you may be able to make a clinical negligence claim.
Is There A Time Limit To Make A Medical Negligence Claim?: Our article explains how long you have to make a medical negligence claim.
Medical Negligence Compensation Claims: Have you suffered medical negligence? Our guide discusses how you can make a medical negligence compensation claim.
How To Access Your Medical Records: If you’re wondering how to access your medical records, this NHS guide talks you through this.
Your Health Records: This NHS article explains what your health records include.
How Do I Get A Copy Of My Health (Medical) Records?: This NHS guide includes further information about how to get a copy of your medical records.
FAQs About Lost Medical Records Compensation Claims
In this section, we look at commonly asked questions to do with data breaches.
How do you get a copy of your medical records?
To access your NHS GP records, you can register for GP online services.
What medical data could have been lost?
To find out what medical data could have been lost, you should contact the healthcare provider directly. Here are some examples of medical data:
- Lab results
- X-ray and MRI scan results
- Handwritten medical notes
- Consent forms
Thank you for reading our guide on lost medical records compensation.
Writer HL
Checked by HT
