Riagg files of thousands of patients open and exposed in a basement

The this post uses machine translation of a report in Dutch. It concerns the discovery of patient files on CDs found unsecured in the basement of a building that, until 2015, was a former mental health institution — the Riagg Rijnmond Foundation.

Rutger de QuayRik Wassens report that the young man who found the files turned them over to the newspaper to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

A sample from NRC shows that the discs are indeed full of the most sensitive patient data – interview reports, sometimes handwritten, own observations of care providers, medication history and referral notes from GPs. In addition to these medical data, which are covered by professional secrecy, they also contain other sensitive information, such as social security numbers and copies of identity documents. The files – one CD contains almost 800 – concern adult patients, but the NRC sample also included minors (at the time). The CDs were produced between 2007 and 2011.