27.02.17
NHS slammed for ‘serious failure’ as 500,000 sensitive documents lost
The NHS is at the heart of an “emerging scandal” concerning the loss of more than half a million pieces of confidential medical information including test results and treatment plans, the Patients Association has said.
The number of lost documents is thought to be around 500,000 pieces of sensitive information that were mislaid by NHS Shared Business Service (SBS).
The leak has been described as one of the biggest losses of sensitive data that the NHS has ever suffered in the 69 years of its existence, and has led to NHS England forming a 50-person team to assess the extent of the loss – which could have caused loss of life due to delays in materials reaching GPs.
It is feared that the loss of documents, which was identified back in March 2016, could have put patients at risk as prescriptions and diagnoses were delayed for patients.
Patients Association has slammed NHS England for the error, saying that if reports suggesting the data loss could be put down to outsourced services, this should come as a wakeup call for the organisation to manage their contracts properly.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive officer of the Patients Association, said: “Today’s reports about data losses within the NHS have the hallmarks of an emerging scandal. I was shocked to hear that NHS England has set up a team to establish the extent of patient harm.
“This is not merely some bureaucratic bungle, but a serious failure with real life consequences.
“If the cause of the failure was an outsourced service, as reports suggest, this shows the vital importance of managing contracts with providers to the NHS properly and making sure that they are delivering a high-quality service for the public.”
She added that this episode has the potential to be hugely damaging to patient care in the future. “Effective data sharing is vital to running and planning NHS services, and also to medical research, but patients must have confidence in the security of their data before they will consent to its use,” said Murphy.
“These developments put this at serious risk: NHS England must issue a full statement today about the situation, as a first step towards restoring patient trust. Patients trust the NHS to look after their confidential information and this confidence is now eroded.”
The shadow health minister Jonathan Ashworth also weighed in on the issue, calling it an “absolute scandal” that had “all the signs of a cover-up” from Jeremy Hunt.
He said: “For a company partly owned by the Department of Health and a private company to fail to deliver half a million NHS letters, many of which contain information critical to patient care is astonishing. Patient safety will have been put seriously at risk as a result of this staggering incompetence.
He continued: “It appears this matter was discovered at least by January 2016, and six months later in July 2016 Jeremy Hunt chose to issue a 138-word statement to Parliament.
“This statement was perfunctory, complacent and evasive, failing to reveal any of the catastrophic detail of how 500,000 pieces of correspondence, including test and screening results and pathways following hospital treatment, had failed to be delivered and were in fact languishing unopened in a warehouse.
“Instead Mr Hunt glibly told Parliament that ‘some correspondence in the mail redirection service has not reached the intended recipients’. For a Secretary of State who supposedly has transparency as his watchword this looks like he has tried to hide the scandal from patients and the public. It’s totally unacceptable.”
A spokesman for NHS England said: “Some correspondence forwarded to SBS between 2011-2016 was not redirected or forwarded by them to GP surgeries or linked to the medical record when the sender sent correspondence to the wrong GP or the patient changed practice.
“A team including clinical experts has reviewed that old correspondence and it has now all been delivered wherever possible to the correct practice. SBS have expressed regret for this situation.”
Have you got a story to tell? Would you like to become an NHE columnist? If so, click here.