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Hospital apologises as patient files are emailed to CNJ
AN INVESTIGATION has been launched at the country’s leading children’s hospital after confidential details of a complaint relating to the death of a teenage boy were mistakenly emailed directly to the New Journal.
Dr Jane Collins, chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital in Bloomsbury, issued a personal apology to the family involved on Tuesday for the “appalling lapse in confidentiality”.
She praised the New Journal for immediately agreeing not to publish any of the highly sensitive internal data.
The New Journal destroyed the information after alerting the hospital to how freely the document had been passed on.
The patient complaint files – emailed accidentally to a New Journal reporter at 9.44am on Thursday – contained serious claims about Great Ormond Street Hospital’s surgeons.
Dr Collins said: “I have to apologise for this appalling lapse in confidentiality.
“We have apologised directly to the family for the understandable distress and anxiety this will cause.
“We are treating this as a serious untoward incident.”
She added: “We thank the newspaper for not reporting the confidential details of the family’s complaint, which we are investigating and where we hope to provide a full reply.”
The email should have been sent to a member of the hospital medical team with a first name similar to that of the reporter who received it.
Dr Collins said a “human check” of email addresses should be made before sending and that automatic address book systems were “not intelligent”, adding that the hospital sends about 1.8 million external and 3.9 million internal emails each year.
The hospital’s senior press spokesman added: “Information security experts are investigating but it seems almost certain that the address function brought up an email address similar to a member of hospital staff who needed to review the complaint.
“The trust has already issued frequent reminders that external email is not a secure means of sending patient-specific information without consent and recommends encryption or the NHS.net confidential system.
“New advice is being drafted to all staff about checking addresses.” |
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