Are my medical records confidential once I file a work injury claim?

Why the usual doctor-patient protection is lifted

Confidentiality between doctor and patient exists so that people will speak frankly to their physicians. A compensation claim inverts the problem: the claimant is asking a public fund to pay precisely because of a medical condition, and the fund cannot assess that without seeing the medical facts. The law resolves the tension by removing the privilege only where the claimant has put his own condition in issue. That is why the article is worded narrowly — it strips privilege from information developed in connection with treatment or examination for which compensation is sought, not from your medical history at large.

What the article requires of your doctor

The provision imposes duties on the attending physician, not only on the claimant. Any physician attending an injured or sick employee must comply with the regulations of the System and submit reports in the prescribed forms, at the times required, about the employee's condition or treatment. The article then adds that All medical information relevant to the particular injury or sickness shall, on demand, be made available to the employee or the System. Note who benefits: you are named alongside the System. If a company-designated doctor or a hospital is withholding your own records from you, this is the provision to point them to.

What is not opened up

The key words are relevant to the particular injury or sickness. The article does not turn a claim for a crushed hand into a warrant for your entire chart — unrelated psychiatric treatment, reproductive health records or conditions with no bearing on the claimed injury are outside its terms. Neither does it authorise general circulation of the information. It removes the evidentiary privilege as between you, the physician and the System handling the claim; it is not a licence for an employer to publish a diagnosis to colleagues, and misuse of health data may engage separate obligations under data privacy law.

Practical consequences for a claimant

Assume everything you tell a treating or examining doctor about this injury may be read by the people deciding the claim, and that inconsistencies between what you told the emergency room, what you told your own physician and what you wrote on the claim form will be noticed. That is a reason to be accurate from the very first consultation, not a reason to be guarded. Ask for copies of every report submitted on your behalf and keep them. Where a report seems incomplete or records a mechanism of injury you did not describe, raise it with the physician in writing while the correction is still easy.

Related provisions

• Labor Code, Article 187 — Duties Of Attending Physician
• Labor Code, Article 185 — Medical Services During Disability