Catherine Lillington reports:
Medical records of 24 hospital patients have been found dumped in a bin in Coventry.
An investigation has now been launched following the discovery of the confidential University Hospital paperwork last week.
The location of the bin has not been disclosed, but is not on the hospital site itself.
How the information ended up in a city bin is not yet known but the hospital has sought to reassure the public by describing the incident as a “rare occurrence.”
Read more on Coventry Telegraph, and then consider this:
In 2011, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust signed an undertaking with the Information Commissioner’s Office because of two incidents that year in which patient records were found in public bins. So what will the ICO say this time?
UPDATE: BBC reports that this was two sets of medical records belonging to 12 elderly patients at University Hospital Coventry that were found near a bin in Foleshill. The person who found them reportedly said, “”I saw the hospital numbers, the ages, the names, the full medical conditions they were suffering from, the treatment they were receiving and their consultant’s name.”