I've got a new job with health insurance and dental and everything, so I'm going to go to the doctor. I was thinking it might be a good idea to have copies of my medical records from my time in Scotland. I left so quickly that it just hadn't occurred to me to get them, and now, 2.5 years later, I'm realizing they might be helpful.
Does anyone know how to go about getting these? Will it all just be in a central system, or would I need to ask after each GP/hospital I had used? I had all my medical stuff through the Scottish NHS, not anything under the other one.
Thanks in advance!
Not sure if you still need this question answered, but it caught my eye & someone else may find the info useful.
My husband & I lived in England, not Scotland, so YMMV...but this is what I did when my new American doctor asked for my past medical records last year:
I rang up my old English GP surgery and asked how to get my records transferred. After a few misunderstandings & some confusion on both sides, they had me send a (snailmail) letter directly to my old GP, signed by myself and my husband, and including our NHS numbers & DOBs, and giving our permission for the 11 years' worth of records to be summarized and transferred by email attachment to us. We had to include a UK cheque for 20 Bpounds (10 Bp for each of our records) to cover the cost of printing & processing the records.
So I suggest you ring up your old surgery and ask. Our surgery was small, and seemed confused by the request at first. Not sure if this was the way any other surgery would handle it, but it worked for us....
