Lost medical notes resulting in second medical board (FOI)

Request

I would like to know how many times a customer at Customer and Local Services (CLS) has been asked to attend a second medical board due to the doctor losing their notes.

Response

Since 2018, there are less than five instances of a customer being required to attend a second medical board due to notes not saved onto the medical board eform.

Due to the numbers involved it is not possible to provide a further breakdown as this could potentially lead to the identification of individuals, disclosure control has therefore been applied to numbers less than five and Article 25 (Personal Information) has been applied.

Prior to 2018, our administrative procedures did not record this type of incident in an easily accessible format and would therefore require a manual search of all claims where a medical board had been held. Due to the number involved this process would exceed the cost limit. Therefore, Article 16 has been applied.

Article applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

For the purposes of Article 16(1) of the Law, if the estimated cost of supplying information would exceed the specified amount, as determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.