By Jade Maine. Last Updated 28th August 2024. Your medical records contain personal, often sensitive information that should be seen only by you and the medical professionals who give you treatment. The unexpected loss of such records could be a serious source of stress and concern. Our guide to compensation for a loss of medical records explains when it is possible to make a personal data breach claim.
Read on to learn what personal data is and when you have the right to make a lost records claim. We also discuss the different types of damage that lost medical records compensation in the UK can address.
Continue reading through the guide to learn how our specialist No Win No Fee solicitors can help you claim with no fee for their work unless your case wins.
Our advisors can share even more guidance on lost medical records claims and help you learn if you have a valid case. Our service is free and available around the clock, so simply choose one of these options to begin.
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Select A Section
- When Could I Claim Compensation For A Loss Of My Medical Records?
- How Could Your Medical Records Be Lost?
- How Can I Prove My Medical Records Have Gone Missing
- Lost Medical Records Compensation In The UK
- Claiming Compensation A Loss Of Medical Records With A No Win No Fee Solicitor
When Could I Claim Compensation For A Loss Of My Medical Records?
Any organisation that processes your personal data must take all the necessary precautions to protect it. They must also adhere to data protection laws, which are the UK General Protection Data Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
If an organisation fails to comply with data protection laws, this could result in a personal data breach. A personal data breach is a security incident that compromises the integrity, availability and confidentiality of personal data. For example, if an organisation lost your medical records.
To be eligible to make a claim for a personal data breach, you will need to prove:
- Your personal data was compromised in the breach.
- An organisation’s failings caused the breach.
- Due to the personal data breach, you suffered financially or mentally.
Contact our advisors today to see if you could claim for a medical records data breach.
What Are My Medical Records?
Your medical records contain personal details such as your:
- Name.
- Address.
- Email address.
- Medical conditions.
- Test results.
- Treatment history.
They could be held on computers or on paper records. Regardless, all of the information in those medical records should be kept confidential. If your data privacy has been exposed because your medical records have been lost, this could be considered a data breach.
What Is A Data Breach?
A data breach, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), is a data security incident leading to personal data being:
- Stolen.
- Accessed without authorisation/unlawfully.
- Transmitted, disclosed, stored, altered or processed without authorisation/unlawfully.
- Lost.
How Could Your Medical Records Be Lost?
There are various ways in which your medical records could be lost. These could include:
- Faulty computer systems, software or cloud services.
- A cyber attack that leads to the loss of data, such as a hacking.
- Files being misplaced.
- Reports slipping out of paper files.
- Filing errors.
Your claim would need to establish that your medical records were lost while in the possession of an organisation responsible for protecting them. It will also need to prove that the records were lost because the organisation failed to take the correct steps to prevent this data breach from occurring.
How Can I Prove My Medical Records Have Gone Missing?
When claiming lost medical records compensation in the UK, you’ll need to provide evidence that your records have gone missing and that you have subsequently experienced harm. Without any evidence, you may struggle to make a claim for data breach compensation.
If you would like to work with one of our expert data breach solicitors, they’ll be able to gather evidence on your behalf. Evidence could include:
- Any correspondence you have had with the organisation at fault
- Proof of financial losses, such as bank statements or receipts
- Correspondence with the ICO, if you reported the breach to them
In addition, they can organise for you to see a medical expert, who would be able to diagnose any mental health problems you may have endured due to the data breach.
If an organisation becomes aware that your personal data has been breached, they are expected to inform you without undue delay. This communication can be used as proof the breach occurred.
Lost Medical Records Compensation In The UK
If your data breach claim succeeds, you could be awarded compensation for a loss of medical records that reflects two types of damage. These are material damage, and non-material damage.
The former refers to the financial impact caused by your missing records. The latter refers to the impact of your mental health that the personal data breach has caused you. You can claim for each damage individually or both together.
Under non-material damage compensation, you could claim for suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and stress.
When valuing your claim for your non-material damage, the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG) may be referred to along with your independent medical assessment reports. The JCG lists guideline compensation brackets for different types of psychological damage.
Guideline Compensation Brackets
Below, we look at a few figures given for mental health injuries from the JCG. Please note, that these are guideline amounts only, and that the top amount does not appear in the JCG:
- If you’ve suffered a serious mental health injury, plus financial losses such as lost earnings, up to £250,000+ of compensation could potentially be awarded.
- If you’ve suffered severe psychiatric damage, where the prognosis is very poor and where multiple factors of your life have marked problems (such as the ability to work), you could potentially be awarded between £66,920 to £141,240 in compensation.
- If you’ve suffered moderately severe psychiatric damage, where there are still significant problems with multiple factors of your life but the prognosis is more optimistic, you could potentially be awarded between £23,270 to £66,920 in compensation.
- If you’ve suffered moderate psychiatric damage, where the prognosis is good due to a marked improvement by trial, you could potentially be awarded between £7,150 to £23,270 in compensation.
- Alternatively, if you’ve suffered severe PTSD, where permanent effects to all aspects of your life prevent you from functioning near the pre-trauma level, you could potentially be awarded between £73,050 to £122,850 in compensation.
- If you’ve suffered moderately severe PTSD, where the prognosis is better due to some recovery with professional help, but the effects will still cause significant disability for the foreseeable, you could potentially be awarded between £28,250 to £73,050 in compensation.
- If you’ve suffered moderate PTSD, where you have a large recovery and the continuing effects aren’t grossly disabling, you could potentially be awarded between £9,980 to £28,250 in compensation.
Material Damage Compensation
As mentioned above, you can also claim compensation for any material damage that has been caused by the lost records data breach.
This includes:.
- Your loss of earnings if you need to take time off work to recover from the psychological impact of the breach.
- If you had to pay for psychiatric care or therapy due to the mental health issues the data breach caused you.
It is best to provide evidence of your material damage. For example, any payslips, invoices, bank statements, or receipts.
To learn more about claiming lost medical records compensation in the UK, please contact us today.
Claiming Compensation A Loss Of Medical Records With A No Win No Fee Solicitor
If you seek lost medical records compensation and are UK based, one of our No Win No Fee solicitors could potentially help you, provided you have a valid personal data breach claim. By offering you a a Conditional Fee Agreement (which is s type of No Win No Fee contract), you won’t be required to pay any upfront or ongoing service fees. You will also not have to pay them for the services they have provided should your claim be unsuccessful.
In the event that your claim is a success, you will pay the solicitor working on your case a success fee. This is deducted from your compensation, and there is a legal cap in place for the percentage that this fee can be.
For more information on when you could make a claim for a breach of the UK GDPR, or to see if you may be eligible to work with one of our solicitors, you can contact our advisory team. Contact them today by:
- Calling 0800 073 8804
- Completing our ‘claim online’ form.
- Using our live chat.
Contact our team today for more information on claiming lost medical records compensation by following the details in this guide.
Learn More About Data Breach Claims
You can get further guidance on claiming for a personal data breach here:
- We review the claims process for lost and stolen paperwork that causes a data breach.
- Our guide to optician data breach claims.
- We review compensation for a dentist’s breach of data.
For some additional reading:
- NHS – How to complain about medical staff’s conduct.
- ICO – Action taken by the ICO against organisations acting unlawfully.
- GOV.UK – Top cyber security tips for staying safe online.
Thank you for reading our guide on compensation for the loss of medical records. You can learn even more about claiming by checking out the video you see below.
