An employer may wish to require an employee to have a medical examination or provide a medical report for a variety of reasons such as to assist in managing long-term absences, to determine eligibility under a permanent health insurance scheme or to assess if the employee requires any reasonable adjustments.

Employers will need to be aware that when seeking to have the medical report disclosed by the doctor, they will need the employee’s explicit consent. This is because the Access to Personal Files and Medical Reports (Northern Ireland) Order 1991 requires that prior to applying for disclosure of the medical report, the employee must be notified and their consent must have been given.

Additionally, information about an employee’s health is recognised as special category data under the UK GDPR and obtaining a medical report will amount to processing for the purposes of the UK GDPR. Employers should be clear and transparent with employees from the outset about the purposes for processing the health information. Under the UK GDPR the employer needs a lawful basis for processing the health data it receives in a medical report. For example, the employer may be able to rely on the fact it is exercising obligations in connection with employment such as the obligation to administer sick pay. As employers, it is worth checking contracts of employment for any relevant provision dealing with medical reports.

If an employee withholds consent to disclose a report, employers should carefully document the steps that they took to obtain the consent, any reasons that were given by the employee for refusal and the employer’s reasoning for the report and implications of further refusal.

This article was provided by Madison Bowyer, an Associate in the Employment Law Group at Arthur Cox NI. 

T:+44 28 9026 5886 
E: Madison.bowyer@arthurcox.com 
https://www.arthurcox.com/