Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt grilled on missing confidential NHS data
- 27 February 2017
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt was told more than 500,000 missing confidential NHS correspondence a year ago but kept the information secret on official advice.
Hunt faced urgent questions in the Commons after a report in The Guardian that 709,000 letters sent between GPs and hospitals in the five years to 2016 never arrived at their destination. About 500,000 contained confidential clinical data.
Instead, NHS Shared Businesses Services, the company charged with transporting the letters, stored the information in a warehouse, in some case for years.
The missing correspondents could affect thousands of patients, with prescriptions, blood test results, screening data, biopsies and other key medical information not being seen by its intended recipient.
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Labour shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, called the missing data a “shambles that has put patient safety at risk” that the Government had then tried to “cover-up”.
“It is an absolute scandal.”
Replying to the urgent questions, Hunt conceded the company had been “totally incompetent” in its handling of the correspondence.
“I think it is completely extraordinary that for such a long period of time that such a huge amount of data went gone missing,” he said.
But Hunt said no confidential data had been lost and all had now been provided to the relevant GPs.
“The data was not lost, it was kept in a secure site….what did happen was it wasn’t past onto the right GP surgeries.”
NHS England has launched an inquiry into the missing data, which has already identified 2,500 cases where further investigation is required to determine whether patients were harmed.
Hunt said 2000 of these cases had been examined so far and no evidence of patient harm had been uncovered.
The data has now been returned to GPs involved, who are spending hours assessing whether the missing information had harmed any of their patients.
“I’m sure it had created extra work for GPs but, so far, in the vast majority of cases patient harm was avoided.”
However, this was at odds with reports of a Department of Health update to MPs on the public accounts committee, which indicated 173 instances of likely patient harm had been identified.
Hunt also confirmed that he was made aware on the misplaced correspondence in March, 2016. However, he did not make the mistake public until June last year on official advice. The full extent of missing data was not revealed until today.
“Going public at a very early stage risk overwhelming GPs.”
NHS Shared Business Services is co-owned by the Department of Health and the French company Sopra Steria. Its main business is managing supplier contracts on the behalf of the NHS.
The scale of the missing files in unprecedented and was criticised by opposition parties and the BMA, which expressed concern about the potential harm to patients.
13 Comments
Just Wow. Can you imagine the press uproar if this happened under a Labour government.
Jeremy has presided over the destruction of the NHS. He is overall responsible for this mess.
Between top down reorganisations (to fracture the NHS so it can be more easily be exploited by US companies), cuts to funding and a lack of accountability at the highest levels, the buck stops with him.
Why aren’t staff being trained appropriately? It all boils down to leadership and funding. The highest levels are saying “sell, sell” to patient confidentiality whilst lining their own pockets to change policy to enable this.
Nobody is demanding his resignation though. Why? Because he’s the steadfast neoliberal that the Tories idealise. The whole of this crooked Government is happy for poorer people to just die and it seems most people in this country are too.
“I’m not sick Doctor, isn’t this all just normal for a selfish and individualistic society?”
Jeremy Hunt appears to think that the non-delivery of letters and results between hospitals and GPs for whatever reason is not a matter for concern.
I would be interested to know whether he considers that all these letters and results were so irrelevant that they would not have affected the management and treatment of the patient by the GP as presumably intended. If there would have been no effect – as believed by Jeremy Hunt – why were the documents created in the first place?
I hope that the practices receiving the mislaid documents will note the date on which they were received: it might be difficult otherwise to justify lack of action – or actions taked without reference to the correspondence/results – when it turns out that patients *had* been harmed…
This is appalling on so many levels. To strike off an oncology patient is totally unacceptable especially for something so trivial.
Whilst no doctor I firmly believe the person whose records got mixed up with mine had cancer. I have no idea to this day if the x-ray and appointments that I was sent to instead of this patient ever got the care they needed. Given that they were unable to trace the error or referral, unless this patient was being proactive I suspect it may all have been too late.
When my father was sent for scans and tests (we knew it was cancer) the first thing I said to my parents was, be proactive, always follow up and chase the hospital. Do not assume they are doing their job, and even if they are don’t assume they haven’t lost your information or forgotten you.
People put their trust and lives in the hands of the NHS. This is not something I should have to warn my parents about, nor something they should need to worry about. Distressing!
“be proactive, always follow up and chase the hospital. Do not assume they are doing their job, and even if they are don’t assume they haven’t lost your information or forgotten you.”
Dan is right. This has worked for me, an 87 year old with multiple co-morbidities. Be stroppy to get results from the NHS. Too many of my contemporaries, who never checked whether their records were actioned by their GPs or hospital doctors, are now dead.
I worry because, although I can see my blood-test results on my GP’s website, I can’t see other correspondence between GP and hospital. I cannot therefore check the accuracy of my record or whether it has actually been actually sent in a timely fashion.
Doctors are busy people. They need the patient to pick up things that they have missed. The patient record, visible to the patient and doctor, is the only medium to enable this.
This is appalling on so many levels. To strike off an oncology patient is totally unacceptable especially for something so trivial.
Whilst no doctor I firmly believe the person whose records got mixed up with mine had cancer. I have no idea to this day if the x-ray and appointments that I was sent to instead of this patient ever got the care they needed. Given that they were unable to trace the error or referral, unless this patient was being proactive I suspect it may all have been too late.
When my father was sent for scans and tests (we knew it was cancer) the first thing I said to my parents was, be proactive, always follow up and chase the hospital. Do not assume they are doing their job, and even if they are don’t assume they haven’t lost your information or forgotten you.
People put their trust and lives in the hands of the NHS. This is not something I should have to warn my parents about, nor something they should need to worry about. Distressing!
We lost our Mother in 2015 and l was left with many questions to the cause and worries about her cancer care or should l say lack of follow up,which was mentioned by a Dr when she became ill again in 2015.As a result l paid to view the hospital notes and was shocked to find a letter saying mum had not attended an Oncologist outpatients appointment resulting in her being struck from the list,Mother attended every appointment with me and one can only think the letter never arrived.l was also shocked to discover no notes about her time receiving chemotherapy.The recent news seems to explain!
I don’t think any one – honestly – is surprised by this. The handling of paper and electronic patient information is handled by the NHS like a leaky bucket. A lot of it is safe, but at the same time it’s p1ss1ing out the sides.
The right technology is not in place where it’s needed. That needs resolving through smarter procurement and better development from the supplier market. But, training also needs to be improved from just a boring and mundane powerpoint or elearning module to really engaging training on why IG is so important and why a blasé attitude is not good enough – oh and any mishandling of confidential information will count as gross misconduct and you’re out.
The NHS does not hold itself to truly high standards. It has a “good enough” attitude to everything. But, the truth is, almost the entire experience isn’t “good enough”. The system has huge problems, and more money isn’t just going to fix the problem. It needs good leadership, systems, standards, and safety to all be aligned. But, here’s to the A Stars doing their best in this storm.
Couple of thoughts (I know some of the answers):
Why is correspondence going by post?
Why doesn’t the NHS have a reliable system for dealing with correspondence (both electronic and paper) for patients who have moved practice?
Why wasn’t the problem noticed earlier? (should the patient get involved in this process)
Why don’t we have back up systems, such as NHS organisations sharing documents they’ve sent to other organisations (so other clinicians can view the patients records).
Probably one of the most disorganised and high cost services in the world bar none. My friend turned up for an appointment and had to have another two weeks later. Hard if you have cancer. They did not know why he was there. He went to an appointment in an acute with his wife and they could not find her record. She had to come back two weeks later when they had the record. This was despite the records office being fifty meters along a corridor. Being an NHS employee on both occasions I blew the whistle and later found lower cost more efficient services. Don’t work for the NHS no more.
For me this just feels like the tip of an iceberg. In my view Information Governance in the NHS is at best lacking and at worst deadly.
I have lost count of the number of repeat prescriptions of mine that have gone missing. Not to mention the fact that I have been handed other people’s prescriptions as well.
There is something of a blasé attitude and shoulder shrug moment when you point this out to front line staff. In my experience reception and admin staff are inadequately trained to deal with patient data especially in general practice.
I have had similar issues in the Acute too. In 2011 I was sent to gastroenterology at the Royal Free London hospital. They were leaving notes in the corridor outside each of the consultation rooms for the next patient. When I complained about this they denied it even happened at first. As a patient I really should not have to point this out this is appalling practice let alone fight to get resolved.
Even when computerised the situation isn’t much better. The Royal Free mixed my notes up and sent me for someone else’s x-ray then 4 years later I started getting letter to go for some random pre-surgery appointment!
Only the other week I was left unattended in Radiology at the Horton (Oxford University Hospitals) with both the ultrasound machine and the computer left logged in and but an arm’s length away.
To top it all when I asked about getting access to my data the person in charge of Subject Access Requests didn’t know the basics of how to implement SARs. Meanwhile my GP is busy refusing to email me because of “policy” and “security” issues.
Of course on each and every occasion the NHS is “sorry that on this occasion our services have fallen below our usual high standards” and of course the ICO decides not to take regulatory action. As for the Ombudsman I may as well talk to the wall.
Whilst I may have more occasions than your average person to interact with the NHS, I do not for one second think I am unlucky or a special case. Information Governance problems in the NHS are rife, I just think I see what many others do not see or they have become blind to.
With the NHS Still struggling to understand the Data Protection Act from 1998, I cannot for one second imagine how the NHS will cope with GDPR and its stiff penalties.
I am currently working at a Trust that wants to leave any misfiled electronic documents in the incorrect file but tag them, so clinicians can see they are misfiled – this seems very wrong to me.
With an electronic record there is a full audit trail, so why leave the misfiled documents in the incorrect file?
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