Millions of medical records lost by the NHS

Is your medical data safe with the NHS? Probably, but not necessarily.

Millions of personal medical records have been lost by NHS trusts and hospitals, in the latest of a long series of data breaches which include staff losing laptops and memory sticks, and in one case faxing details of patients’ operations to the wrong number.

The Information Commissioner will impose fines of up to £500,000 on hard-pressed NHS trusts and hospitals in order to counter what he called a “disturbing” culture in the health service.

Five more health organisations have agreed to undertakings to improve security after breaches of data protection. In February, Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust misplaced 29 records after a member of staff took them home to update a training log and then lost them. In the same month, a medical practice in Durham sent out details of patients’ operations to the wrong fax number. Other breaches were recently committed by East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Basildon and Thurrock NHS Trust.

The Information Commissioner is investigating how the NHS North Central London Trust managed to lose a laptop containing an estimated 8.3m patient records.

Over 8 million records on one laptop!

It also recently emerged that thousands of notes belonging to cancer patients have gone missing from the abandoned Belvoir Park hospital in Belfast, which closed in 2006.

And the Information Commissioner cited a recent case in Bury where information on accident victims was being provided to a claims management company:

It’s all too easy for information to be blagged from the doctor’s surgery. You can ring up, pretend to be somebody else and you are not very often challenged by the questions you would face if you were ringing up your bank. You don’t have to prove who you are.

Slapdash. But even fines wouldn't affect the individuals responsible.

Again NHS staff get away with it.