Mex Cooper reports:
A medical centre that kept sensitive health records of nearly 1000 patients in a garden shed on a disused property in Melbourne’s south-east has been reprimanded for breaching privacy laws.
Boxes of records containing the personal details of patients were discovered at the Narre Warren South site when the shed at the Amberley Park Drive property was broken into in November 2013.
Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim investigated and found the medical centre that owned the property had breached the Privacy Act by failing to properly secure the information.
The neglected files included names, addresses, Medicare numbers, dates of birth, occupations and results of medical investigations of about 960 patients who used the Amberley Park Medical Centre that operated at the address until April 2011. Most of the records related to patients who visited the centre prior to 2004.
Read more on The Age. I’d say the centre got off really easy – too easy – if all it has to do is do what it should have done in the first instance. What do you think?