One digital health record for better healthcare

Exercising the rights of another patient can be done in various roles:

A representative can gather information about the health condition and access the patient's medical record.

Are you responsible for making medical decisions on behalf of another patient? In this case, you can become a representative or legal guardian.

Foster parents and proxy holders for healthcare decisions also have certain rights regarding a patient and may access the medical record.

As a parent, you can access the medical record of your child (under 15 years old) through a parent/child link. To prove that you have parental authority, additional documents may be required.

For a child under 15 years (parent/child link)

For a child over 15 years (representative)

Parental authority

Additional documents

Information about your privacy and who has access to your medical record can be found here.

In the 'Access' section, you can find an overview of healthcare providers who have access to your medical record (e.g., general practitioner, healthcare provider, representative, etc.).

Your general practitioner automatically has access to your record. If you do not want this, you can report it to the registration desk at your hospital or revoke access on the website www.mynexuzhealth.be. Other healthcare providers do not have automatic access to your Nexuzhealth record.

If you want to grant access to an external healthcare provider, they must register through www.nexuzhealth.com/en/consult. Once the healthcare provider has access to Nexuzhealth Consult, they need to submit a request to access your record.

If you later wish to deny access to a healthcare provider, you can report it to the registration desk at your hospital or revoke access via www.mynexuzhealth.be.

Accessing the medical record after a patient's death is often a challenging and delicate matter. On one hand, it involves privacy and the protection of personal data, while on the other hand, the patient has passed away and cannot personally object.

The Patient Rights Act provides for only indirect access to the medical record after the patient's death by a healthcare professional (e.g., doctor, nurse, pharmacist, dentist, or paramedic) designated by the requester. This means that the requester cannot personally view the record.

Article 9 of the Law of August 22, 2002, concerning patient rights, stipulates that indirect access to the record of the deceased patient can be requested by the spouse, legal cohabiting partner, partner, and blood relatives up to the second degree (e.g., sisters, grandparents, and grandchildren). Access to the record must be sufficiently motivated and is only possible if the patient did not explicitly object to it during their lifetime.

In the Mynexuzhealth application, access to the patient's record is immediately closed upon the patient's death. The entitled individuals can submit a request for indirect access through the hospital's ombudsman service.

A patient’s file is shared with a healthcare provider when a therapeutic relationship is established between the patient and this healthcare provider. A therapeutic relationship is a relationship between a patient and a healthcare provider in the context of which healthcare is provided, or simply put, the relationship of trust between patient and healthcare provider.

In the absence of a known therapeutic relationship in the system, healthcare providers do not, in principle, have access to the patient’s medical records. However, several other scenarios are possible where access to the file is required. Some examples to illustrate this:

• When a healthcare provider sends a sample to the hospital laboratory, a clinical biologist or laboratory technician can consult the patient’s file;
• Within the framework of clinical studies, medical data from health records may be consulted by a researcher;
• A healthcare provider is called by the patient’s general practitioner with questions about a report of a treatment some months ago;
• When a patient arrives unconscious in an emergency room and their representative cannot be reached in time, the healthcare provider will be able to consult the patient’s record in order to administer appropriate care.

In the above cases, the healthcare provider must apply the ‘break the glass principle ‘. This will also be logged in the system with the corresponding justification of the care provider (e.g. the therapeutic relationship is not yet known by the system).

A patient can choose to deny specific healthcare providers access to their file (so-called “exclusion” of a healthcare provider). As a result, a healthcare provider may, in principle, no longer access the patient file in any way whatsoever. The patient may request an exclusion regardless of whether or not a therapeutic relationship exists or has existed. This allows a patient to apply for a preventive exclusion (e.g. if an ex-partner is a healthcare provider).

In order to ensure continuity of care, a temporary override of an exclusion may be applied. Suppose that an excluded healthcare provider is the only one on duty for a specific medical discipline for which the patient requires urgent care, this healthcare provider will still be able to gain access to the health record.

There are two different types of exclusions:

1. eHealth exclusions: via the eHealth platform, healthcare providers (with a NIHDI number) can be excluded. These are included in the nexuzhealth applications, but can only be managed via the eHealth platform (e.g. to stop an exclusion) which can be reached via https://www.mijngezondheid.belgie.be/.
2. Nexuzhealth exclusions: via the Nexuzhealth healthcare institutions healthcare providers and staff can also be excluded. These can be accessed and managed via Mynexuzhealth, but are not taken over by the eHealth platform.

In order for an exclusion to have the broadest possible effect, it is therefore advisable to register it via the eHealth platform, where non-nexus healthcare institutions can also consult these exclusions.

For more information, click on Exclusion.

Via the Nexuzhealth care institutions, care providers as well as support staff can be excluded. For example, an administrative employee who can no longer consult the patient’s agenda due to an exclusion.Via the eHealth platform, only healthcare providers with a NIHDI number can be excluded for the time being

For more information, click on: Exclusions.

The federal eHealth platform is used as a so-called metahub and connects all regional hubs (such as CoZo or VZN KUL) so that healthcare providers who have a therapeutic relationship with this patient can consult the available documents about the patient (provided the patient has given their global consent). The patient can register exclusions in the eHealth platform that will result in the excluded healthcare providers no longer having access to the health record via the eHealth platform.

Nexuzhealth supplies an Electronic Health Record (EHR) to the Nexuzhealth care institutions. The exclusions of healthcare providers and staff members that the patient has registered via a Nexuzhealth healthcare institution has effect in all Nexuzhealth healthcare institutions.

In addition, the Nexuzhealth applications take over the exclusions registered in the eHealth platform (starting at Q1 2023), so that the healthcare providers who were already excluded for the health record in the eHealth platform are automatically excluded for the health record in the Nexuzhealth healthcare institutions.
Conversely, the eHealth platform does not take over any exclusions from the Nexuzhealth applications.If the patient wants to stop an exclusion, this requires going through the same process as for the application. In concrete terms, this means that an exclusion originally registered via the eHealth platform must be stopped via the eHealth platform. An exclusion requested via a Nexuzhealth healthcare institution can be stopped via the Mynexuzhealth (web) application or via the Nexuzhealth healthcare institution.

For more information, click on: Exclusions