South Eastern Regional Hospital Board Scotland

Management and administration 1946-1994; finance 1956-1974; patients (unbound records) 1950s

Five Regional Hospital Boards were founded as a result of the NHS (Scotland) Act of 1947 and made responsible for hospital boards of management in their respective Scottish areas. The South Eastern Regional Hospital Board covered over ninety hospitals and institutions from Fife to the Borders which had a total of over 13,000 beds until it was superseded by Lothian Health Board in 1974. In the Lothian area the boards of management included; Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Northern Hospitals, Central Hospitals, Southern Hospitals, Royal Victoria Hospitals, Convalescent Hospitals, Royal Edinburgh, Gogarburn Hospital, East Lothian, Rosslynlee and West Lothian.

Chronological within record class

Public access to these records is governed by the UK Data Protection Act 1998, the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the latest version of the Scottish Government Records Management: NHS Code of Practice (Scotland). Whilst some records may be accessed freely by researchers, the aforementioned legislation and guidelines mean that records with sensitive information on named individuals may be closed to the public for a set time.

Where records are about named deceased adults, they will be open 75 years after the latest date in the record, on the next 01 January. Records about individuals below 18 years (living or deceased) or adults not proven to be deceased will be open 100 years after the latest date in the record, on the next 01 January. Further information on legislation and guidelines covering medical records can be found on the LHSA webpage (http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/).

LHSA can support the use of records closed to public access for legitimate clinical, historical and genealogical research purposes. Please contact the LHSA Archivist for more details regarding procedures on how you can apply for permission to view closed records. Telephone us on: 0131 650 3392 or email us at lhsa@ed.ac.uk

Works Dept

Compiled by Mike Barfoot and Jenny McDermott using existing handlists

Manual item-level descriptive list available

Records held within the National Health Service prior to transfer

No further accessions are expected

Most of the hospital records held by the archive relate to the SERHB for the period of its existence. See also:Catford, Edwin Francis, hospital historian (GD12)