Getting Your Medical Records: The Complete Route
4 February 2026 · Mary Molloy Solicitors
Your medical records are your personal data — all of it: consultation notes, hospital charts, referral letters, results, the lot. Access is a standard GDPR request to the practice or the hospital's records department, free in the ordinary case, answered within a month. The route is simple; the few genuine complications are worth knowing in advance.
Where to send the request
GP records: the practice itself. Public hospital records: the hospital's patient records or freedom of information office, addressed as a GDPR access request. Consultants in private practice and private clinics hold their own records and answer their own requests. If care spanned several providers, send several requests — each controller answers for what it holds.
Identify yourself clearly, give dates of birth and any patient numbers, and specify the period and the records you want — 'my full record' is valid, but naming particular admissions or results speeds retrieval.
The narrow exceptions
Two qualifications appear in practice. Health data can be withheld where disclosure would be likely to cause serious harm to your physical or mental health — a narrow, clinically grounded judgment, not a discretion to refuse awkward requests. And information about other people within your record — family members, third parties mentioned — may be redacted after balancing.
A response relying on either should say so. Silent omission is not application of an exemption; it is an incomplete response, and challengeable.
Deceased relatives' records
The GDPR protects living people, so a deceased person's records travel a different road — access arises through other frameworks, typically involving the personal representatives and the purpose for which records are sought. This lands on solicitors' desks constantly in probate and medical negligence contexts; if that is your situation, take advice on the correct route rather than sending a GDPR request that will be correctly refused.
Read more in our main guide: Health Data and Special Category Data · or back to the blog.
This page contains general information about Irish law and practice. It is not legal advice, it may not reflect your circumstances, and reading it does not create a solicitor–client relationship with Mary Molloy Solicitors. We do not advise on taxation; please speak to your accountant or Revenue. In contentious business, a solicitor may not calculate fees or other charges as a percentage or proportion of any award or settlement.