Proliferation of content in medical records

Lawyers are seeing a proliferation of content in medical records – particularly from some of the London NHS Trusts.  In complex cases this now can lead to disclosure of many tens of thousands of pages. This year we have seen, for the first time, cases where an individual patient’s records exceed 100,000 pages. Cases where the care is documented over around 50,000 pages are no longer uncommon.

High pagecount

These large cases tend to relate to complex care in a tertiary setting, where many specialties are involved over long periods of inpatient care.  This alone doesn’t explain the large volume of information produced in response to a request for disclosure, as the complexity in itself is nothing new.  The high pagecount is due to a combination of repetition built into the digital systems, auto-generation of data, and circular communication between clinicians and Trusts made easier by electronic systems.

How can Clinco help?

Ironically, from an analytical point of view it can be harder with these onerous levels of information to follow the patient journey through the records, and identify the relevant events from the best source within the medical records.  The large volume cases are challenging in terms of time, cost and data management.  They require an experienced analyst who is familiar with the digital systems in use – so that time is not wasted and the key issues clarified relatively quickly. We have plenty of experience at Clinco in managing these larger cases – so do get in touch if you would like informal advice or a sensible, recoverable cost estimate.