Mental Health Legal Centre Inc.

Freedom of Information

What Rights Do I Have?

If you have been a patient in the public psychiatric system you have the right to access your medical record under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) ('FOI Act') except for some types of information which are exempt from production.

• You can request access to your personal records.
• You can ask to have inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or misleading information in your personal records corrected.
• You can appeal against a decision not to give you access to the information or not to amend your personal records.

Freedom of Information laws only apply to public psychiatric services (and other public services like police), −they do not include private services.

Access to Records

If you want to access your personal medical records under the FOI Act, you can download a proforma access form here:-

FOI Access Form - PDF 136 KB

Correction of Records

If you want to correct information in your medical records that is incorrect or out of date, you can download a proforma correction form here:-

FOI Correction Form - PDF 136 KB