Patrick2976

We brought all our medical records over with us. They have never been asked for once (state or private)...A good idea to have them though just in case.

Mitzyboy

You can ask for a copy of your medical records from your local doctor easily enough. Like you, we have never been asked for them in Spain, in fact they never asked us for a history of our medical details at all.

Domino

that is so true, when I came out I went to my local medical centre and presented the GP with a printout of of my hyper-tension medication from the on-line booking/prescription and he just started to prescribe as in the UK.
did question the strength of one item, but the next month agreed that it was OK.

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Lynn R

I am in the private system, and was once asked for the results of a mammogram I'd had in the UK before moving to Spain (they wanted it so they could monitor the progression of a condition). I explained that in the UK the patient is not given the mammogram or X-ray films as they are here (I have quite a file building up, just from the results of routine checks like blood tests, bone density scans, etc!), just a letter saying no abnormalities had been identitied, and they didn't ask me to obtain a copy from the health authority.

In the Spanish state health system, is the patient always given copies of all such results themselves? During the two years I originally had state health cover, I only went to a doctor once for a sinus infection, so I'm just interested to know if it's different.

jackytoo

Hospitals always give a print out of treatment etc. Sometimes a GP will give one of blood test results but it depends on the Doctor.
We used helicopteros Sanitarios as you can get a home visit 24/7. They gave a full extensive resume to take to your GP. When my OH took it to his GP he never even glanced at it, tossed it to one side and started from scratch!

When he had a recurrence of an old knee problem and OH wasn't sure what had been done in the UK. the Spanish GP asked him to contact the UK for details. They faxed it over to GP within 24 hours.

tebo53

Thanks everybody for all the informative answers. Steve

EsuriJohn

Seems to be the case here in Spain all our friends who have had X-rays etc are given their film to carry from machine to doctor then to hospital and they end up retaining it. Back in UK I was once sent by NHS to another town to a private clinic for a colonoscopy and given the results to carry back to my home and retained those. Don't know what happens in either country for such as MRI scans I suppose they could give you those on disc we will find out when I have my knee scanned for cartlidge problems.

UK was trying to get to the position where everything was stored on computer but I think that huge project has been cancelled and just your surgery and the local hospital seem to be connected now but I doubt the link has the speed and capacity for sending scans and such like.

jackytoo

Not sure about scans but the UK GP accesses X-rays by computer. In Spain OH was given all his stuff on sort of tape and disc by the Hospital CDS to take to Carlos Haya in Málaga. Was a real parcel of stuff

mikelincs

Nowadays in the UK GPs and hospitals are usually linked by computer and so can access the patients results without having to wait for a paper copy, but most labs, X-ray depts also send out paper copies, where we lived in Spain that was also the case, and local health centre transferred results to a different area via computer. There was a scheme in the UK to set up a UK wide database so that all GPs and hospitals could access results from anywhere, and that was the rationale for changing from hospital numbers to using the NHS number, and incidentally why the NHS numbers were changed and are now allocated at birth. When a friend was repatriated from Spain to the UK with terminal cancer he was sent with his Spanish results on a CD.
We took our UK medical records with us when we moved to Spain, and handed them in when we first went to the health centre, no idea what they did with them, although we did take a list of prescribed medicines and dosages separately.

Porth

I used to deal with medical negligence in the UK and can only speak for Wales. Yes they supposedly all linked up. They are not for reasons of patient confidentiality. We in Wales are still struggling with e-prescriptions for a number of reasons.

Rosemary

Yes, no secrets, everything given to the patient. Our doctor always looked at results on the computer with the screen turned for us to see rather than print them out but I have a huge pile of printouts from all of Graham´s visits to A & E and of course his numerous stays in the hospital. I have 3 dated the same day, discharged in the morning, A & E visit in the afternoon and then again in the evening.

Rosemary

mikelincs

We used to get them as print outs sent to our house in Spain, and even after they stopped doing that I always looked at all our results as I could always understand tham having worked in a pathology lab all my working life. I even get them shown to me in the UK as the doctors know I understand them, and they will explain any changes made to the significance of the results in the years since I retired.

Lynn R

I have no medical training whatsoever, but a very bad habit of looking stuff up on the internet whenever I get given the results of blood tests or whatever, before I even take them for the doctor to see!

I can't do that with stuff like ultrasound or mammogram results, of course.

EsuriJohn

Our doctor Magdalena has a low opinion of us when we go into the clinic and say I have these symptoms and have looked it up on google and I am about to die of dengue fever. She says in her best English then get google to give you a prescription and cure you!

Lynn R

I did say it was a bad habit, but I can't help it, if somebody gives me a piece of paper I have to read it and find out what it means!

Sometimes I think a bit more research wouldn't come amiss in the medical profession, though - we were watching a programme about junior doctors one night this week, there not being anything more entertaining on, and one of them got a patient who had COPD. He had to look up what it meant in a book as he had no idea! I thought their knowledge would have to be a bit more advanced than that before they were let loose on patients, but apparently not. Another one mixed up the labelling on two blood samples she was sending off for tests and got back a result for the wrong patient! Luckily she did realise what she'd done and was able to get the test repeated, but what if she hadn't?