Medical Records Lost

“Health service workers look after their patients very carefully but don’t always look after their data very carefully.”
- UK Information Commissioner Christopher Graham



(London, England)

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.

Millions of individual records are believed to have been lost and the Commissioner, Christopher Graham, has called a meeting with the chief executive of the National Health Service Sir David Nicholson to discuss the problem.

“There’s just too much of this stuff going on,” Mr Graham told The Independent.

“The senior management is aware of the challenge but the breaches continue. Whether it’s a systemic problem in the NHS or an epidemic we have got to do something about it."

I suggest the problem is both systemic and epidemic and the root cause is philosophical. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, it's still believed that confidentiality can be assured after the government becomes the overseer for personal medical data.