Referrals by medical consultant

Victor wrote: »

If it is within a hospital, I don't see a problem.

I think the OP might be alluding to patients in the public health system, where consultants will operate clinics in public hospitals as well as having their own private patients - public patients for elective procedures may be switched to another consultant if their original consultant isn’t available due to commitments to their private patients.

I don’t think there’s any issue of consent there or GDPR issues (awful amount of scaremongering and misinformation about that among people, “everything” is somehow GDPR related), I think it’s just the inconvenience experienced by the patient having built up a relationship with the consultant.

This is going back over 20 years ago now but I was in hospital for a hip operation, and the nurse was looking at my file while I was sat on the bed waiting for the consultant. She looked at me a bit concerned and said “You look awfully young for your age? What’s your date of birth again?” I told her my date of birth and she looked at me twice as hard.

Then I copped that there must have been a mix up somewhere and she was looking at my fathers medical files. He’d had a hip replacement done only a few months earlier. We would have had the same details in our medical files - same name, home address, etc, the only difference being our dates of birth! It was quickly resolved at least

silver2020 wrote: »

will people ever stop quoting GDPR for every time someone farts in their direction.


Unless you fully understand gdpr, DO NOT quote it as you will make an utter fool of yourself

I think you'll find that very few people fully understand GDPR. If someone has a query, this is the right place to ask questions and hopefully have their query answered.

I'm of the opinion that it's better to ask a question if you don't understand something rather than keeping your mouth shut and never learning the answer.

To be fair, the question raised in the OP is a bit unclear. What being "referred to a consultant" normally means is that your medical practitioner arranges for you be seen by/treated by another consultant doctor. This could be because your condition requires an expertise that your current practitioner doesn't have ("that cough sounds nasty; I think you should see Mr X, the respiratory consultant") or it could be because your current practitioner doesn't have capacity to treat you ("You should be operated on sooner rather than later and, unfortunately, I'm going on leave on Friday; I'll arranged for Ms Y to take a look at you - she's very good"). This normally is done with your consent, because it's discussed with you before it happens, but situations can obviously arise where that doesn't happen. You can of course refuse to be seen or treated by Mr X or Ms Y; you can refuse medical treatment at any time and for any reason.

GDPR questions arise here because referring you to another doctor usually involves passing your clinical notes to that doctor, but that's kind of incidental. As noted above, in fact there is no GDPR problem, because there is an exception allowing data to be transferred in this context without your consent. But you can still refuse to be seen or treated by the other doctor. So your rights here don't really depend on GDPR to any signficant extent, and looking to GDPR to control what medical examinations or treatment you do or don't get is probably a mistake.

But a second possible meaning of "refer to another consultant" could be that your own doctor simply proposes to talk to another doctor about your case, and seek his input, simply on the basis of the clinical notes, without you been seen or treated by the other doctor. Because there's no proposal that you should be seen or treated by the second doctor, your right to refuse to be seen or treated is not relevant. The question here is, can you refuse to allow your doctor to give your clinical notes - your personal data - to the second doctor? Does he need to get your agreement before he consults someone else about your case in this way? And there you would be looking to GDPR for a rule that says your consent is needed. That's a reasonable place to look for such a rule though, as we've seen, GDPR will be no help to you; it allows the transfer of your data without your consent in precisely this circumstance.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

This is going back over 20 years ago now but I was in hospital for a hip operation, and the nurse was looking at my file while I was sat on the bed waiting for the consultant. She looked at me a bit concerned and said “You look awfully young for your age? What’s your date of birth again?” I told her my date of birth and she looked at me twice as hard.

Then I copped that there must have been a mix up somewhere and she was looking at my fathers medical files. He’d had a hip replacement done only a few months earlier. We would have had the same details in our medical files - same name, home address, etc, the only difference being our dates of birth! It was quickly resolved at least

Measure twice, think three times, cut once.