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News, Notes, and Queries

Issues of common concern to archivists with responsibility for medical records and archival collections are discussed regularly at meetings of the Health Archives Group (HAG). Membership of this group is growing constantly and includes representatives from local authority record offices, Health Trust and Hospital archivists, the Royal Colleges, the British Medical Association, the Public Record Office (PRO) and the Institute of Health Record Information and Management. It is heartening that although these professionals have recently seen the abolition of a much-needed post of Archivist at the Royal Society of Medicine (where there are many valuable holdings of archives and accumulated deposited manuscripts), new positions have been created at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the Royal College of General Practitioners, and that at the York Health Trust (now based at the Borthwick Institute) has been placed on a more secure footing. Discussion at HAG meetings often embraces the loaded topics of access and selection of records. In particular the group recognizes that more guidance is needed for those involved in the selection of patient clinical records. This year, courtesy of a grant from the Wellcome Trust, the group published a small booklet: Hospital patient case records: a guide to their retention and disposal (H Maxwell-Stewart, J Sheppard and G Yeo: single copies available without charge from the Archivist, St Bartholomew's Hospital, West Smithfield, London EClA 7BE). The booklet has proved popular and has been widely circulated to record keepers and archivists throughout the UK. Another booklet, with similar aims, has also appeared under the aegis of the Liverpool NHS Trust: Caring for records and artefacts: some guidelines on the disposal of records and artefacts. Both publications are timely, given the continued closure of many hospitals, combined with the fact that the Department of Health has now contracted out storage and retrieval of current health records, and many Hospital Trusts are considering private sector management of non-clinical services including health records, which raises new concerns about issues of access, sensitivity and the survival of patient records. Of the 108 new or additional accessions of material of medical interest received by repositories in the UK in 1995 and reported to the National Register of Archives, 24 are hospital records. Records of the York Lunatic Asylum from 1770 are at the Borthwick Institute. Glamorgan County Asylum records, including patient case notes and photographs from 1864 to 1970 are at the Glamorgan Record Office. Records of several Birmingham hospitals including accounts for the period 1823 to 1857 of the Birmingham Eye Hospital, records and registers of patients and photographs covering 1765 to 1993 of the Birmingham General Hospital, and Birmingham Maternity Hospital minutes and papers, 1843-1948, form a particularly rich group in Birmingham Central Library. Devon Record Office received records for 1868 to 1974 from the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, nineteenthand twentieth-century plans of the Devon Lunatic Asylum, and patient registers and diagnostic books from 1893 to 1974 from the West of England Eye Infirmary. Regional interest is keen at the University of Exeter, where a Medical Archives Survey, sponsored by the Exeter Hospitals Heritage Trust, is surveying Devon hospitals and community medical records to coordinate and formulate a policy for the preservation of the records. Devon County Council plan (with the help of lottery/millennium money) to convert a redundant psychiatric hospital to include space for archives. The National Archives in Ireland have also undertaken hospital survey work recently. It is notable that, discounting hospital records which straddle the century, 63 of the new