Huge data loss puts NHS privatisation and Health Secretary under pressure
pharmafile | February 28, 2017 | News story | Manufacturing and Production | Jeremy Hunt, NHS, data
It has been revealed that a private company, responsible for delivering NHS data, accidentally stored 708,000 pieces of patient data in a warehouse and then failed to deliver them to their destination. The medical correspondence included various types of documents, ranging from tests to diagnoses.
The debacle opens up huge questions on whether attempts to cut the costs of the NHS by employing private sector companies is the correct path, not least because the error continued for five years through 2011 to 2016. When it was eventually discovered and revealed to Jeremy Hunt, in March 2016, nothing was announced of the error until July when it was revealed in a short statement to the House of Commons.
The particular announcement by Hunt did not reveal the depth of the issue, failing to report to MPs that significant loss of patient data nor the fact that patients may have been seriously affected by the blunder.
The scale and seriousness of the error is now being assessed, at a cost of £2.2 million, to determine the extent to which patients’ safety was placed in danger. With some of the correspondence relating to cancer diagnoses to more basic information, such as repeat prescription details, there is a high risk that harm has been done. The Guardian, which originally broke the news, reports that there are still 537 “lives cases” to being investigated for potential harm to patients.
Hunt’s defence for withholding the information until a year after the incident was predicated on the supposition that patients would call their GPs to find out if their data had been lost, potentially disrupting services. “Publicising the issue could have meant GP surgeries being inundated with inquiries from worried patients which would have prevented them from doing the most important work – namely investigating the named patients who were potentially at risk,” Mr Hunt told MPs.
Of course, there is a fine line between ‘protecting the public’ and engaging in a cover-up to protect the reputation of the government until the issue had been resolved. According to sources, the Health Department had been assessing the damage done by the loss of data after the incident was revealed to Hunt.
Ben Hargreaves
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