NHS fined £70,000 for email address snafu

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 30 Apr 2012 at 10:41

The Information Commissioner has fined a health board £70,000 for emailing a patient's medical records to the wrong person.

After years of being lambasted for for slipshod data protection procedures, the ICO has finally lost patience with the NHS, handing out its first ever fine to the health service.

The Information Commissioner's Office was given the power to fine organisations in 2010, but has been criticised for its tendency to punish public sector rather than private firms.

Despite the public sector focus, the NHS has until now avoided a fine, even though it was responsible for almost a quarter of total self-reported breaches over the past year.

Recent health-related cases that didn't lead to a fine include misdirected faxes, a lost memory stick with 87 patients' records, and 18 sets of test results dumped in a bin - as well as the usual lost laptops.

The damage and distress caused by the loss of a patient’s medical record is obvious, therefore it is vital that organisations across this sector make sure their data protection practices are adequate

Such a string of failures has led the ICO to call out the NHS as one of the worst data protection offenders, but until now hasn't resulted in a fine.

The first fine handed out by the data watchdog to a public health body is to the Aneurin Bevan Health Board, which was fined £70,000 after a single patient report was emailed to the wrong person.

"The error occurred when a consultant emailed a letter to a secretary for formatting, but did not include enough information for the secretary to identify the correct patient," the ICO said. "The doctor also misspelt the name of the patient at one point, which led to the report being sent to a former patient with a very similar name in March last year."

Stephen Eckersley, the ICO’s Head of Enforcement noted that health data is "some of the most sensitive information available".

"The damage and distress caused by the loss of a patient’s medical record is obvious, therefore it is vital that organisations across this sector make sure their data protection practices are adequate," he added.

As part of the ICO's action, the Aneurin Bevan Health Board has agreed to improve its procedures, and has already taken steps to do so. The board will receive a 20% discount if it pays the fine early.