Buggered if I know…

The question has been asked before many times, but it came spludging into the puddle of goo that passes for my brain whilst I was waiting to be seen by a specialist at a hospital nearby (oh, OK, I’ll level with you, it was Addenbrooke’s, Cambridge, UK). On arrival, I’d been handed a sheaf of bits of paper, including one about Data Protection. After half an hour’s wait, I decided that this document had become interesting enough to help pass some more time.

The document was fairly detailed and informative, but what leapt out at me was the cost of accessing one’s health records: up to £50 depending on the size and complexity of the request.

It’s mildly intriguing to speculate on why the cost should vary according to the size of the request; there’s surely not much more one can say in a request than “Dear, Addenbrooke’s Hospital people, I would like access to the health records you are keeping about me. Love and kisses”. Perhaps the costs of opening and transporting the contents of an A4 envelope are greater than for an A5 envelope. Some logic there, I guess — buggered if I know — but the advice is clear: use a small piece of paper, stupid!

(The image, by the way, is from Addenbrooke’s own web page on access to health records. The files that look as if they’re about to fall off the shelves are slightly troubling …)

But, even at today’s prices, 50 quid is a lot of money. The UK national minimum wage is £5.52 per hour, so without paying any tax it could cost you more than a day’s wages to get access to records the hospital holds about you.

So, what about the Freedom of Information Act? Addenbrooke’s helpfully provides extensive information about its attitude to Freedom of Information on its website, and it includes a form one can fill in on-line, with the response being returned electronically or on paper, as one wishes. What it doesn’t say there is how much it could cost to get this information.

That information is found on another page (which has only broken links at the time of writing) where it begins by saying (and I quote) “Request for information from our publication scheme will generally be met without charge (please refer to our publication scheme for details).” Hmm, that sounds pretty good, even though the meaning is a bit opaque — from what I can deduce, the publication scheme covers information that Addenbrooke’s trust publishes about itself.

So, what about information not covered by the publication scheme? I will quote what the website says, so that there is no risk of a typo from me:

For information requested under the Freedom of Information Act the following charges will apply:

Where the cost of the Trust responding to your request for information is calculated as being less than £450.00 (this covers the time taken to look for, find and put the information into a format that has been requested) no standard fee will be charged, but we will charge the full costs of disbursements (costs of postage and photocopying) when this exceeds £25.00.

Complying with requests for information which would exceed more than the £450 limit to respond to will be at the discretion of the Trust and may incur a fee.

So, if you were to ask for some information under FOI which would cost less than £450 to retrieve and would cost less than £25 to photocopy and post, it would be sent to you for free. This would be the same, one assumes, if it were to be transmitted electronically. However, if the postage, etc., exceeded £25, you would be charged the full cost of transmitting the data to you. But if the cost of retrieving the information was more than £450, you may get it and be charged an unspecified amount or you may just not get it at all.

So, there you have it:

To get access to your health records may cost you up to £50.

Or it may cost you an unspecified figure.

Or it may even be free. Hurrah!

But, hang on, just a moment. Shouldn’t it be free anyway? This is, after all, the era of Freedom of Information, but what do I know?