NHS negligence: Thousands of medical records lost
POSTED May 25, 2009 - 16:45 | POSTED BY Bimal Preet Kaur
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on May 25, 2009 - 17:27
This year, 140 security breaches took place in NHS between January and April, which exceed the total number of cases put together from the local authorities and the central government.
NHS breaks data regulations
14 NHS institutes have been observed to have broken the data regulations. According to Mick Gorrill, assistant information commissioner, NHS has offended laws by losing such confidential information.
In one instance, the database of 10,000 people was downloaded onto an insecure laptop and the laptop was said to have been stolen from the home of the NHS employee.
In another such case of negligence, a memory stick, which was carrying medical histories of ex-inmates of Preston prison and other 6,360 prison patients, was lost earlier. The password for obtaining the data was written on the device itself.
A matter of concern
Gorill said that it is a matter of great concern that the data has been lost. It would cause obvious distress to the patients since the data is a confidential piece of information.
Plus, he added, many insurance companies sometimes hire private detectives to find out vital information about the policy holder’s medical history etc.
He said that it is well understood what may happen if the data falls into the wrong hands.
Fines in the offing
According to Gorill, since the loss of data is inexcusable, the body will be fined accordingly for such incidences.
To examine how the medical data is stored in various hospitals in Britain, Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, plans to send a crack team of inspectors.
Thomas has written a letter to a senior civil servant in the Department of Health for taking necessary steps for improvements.
A spokesperson of the department said that they will soon reply to Thomas’s letter.
