Patients’ records dumped in alleyway

AN investigation by the Health Service Executive (HSE) is under way after hospital patients’ medical details were found dumped in an alleyway.

Several sheets of paper from the office of a doctor at Letterkenny General Hospital were discovered by a member of the public who realised the information was personal and sensitive.

The man made the baffling discovery across the border in Derry in the residential Gartan Square area of the city and handed them in to his local radio station which alerted the HSE.

In all, 16 patients were named on the sheets, which also recorded their date of birth and hospital registration numbers and carried handwritten notes by the doctor indicating their medical complaint.

In a statement the HSE said in many cases the handwritten note comprised a single word or abbreviation.

“No other details regarding the patients’ addresses, personal circumstances or medical history are contained,” it said.

However, the find comes less than a year after thousands of files from two Cork hospitals were found dumped in disused land east of the city at Glounthaune during excavations for the Cork-Midleton railway.

Those records related to patients who attended the old Cork Regional Hospital and St Finbarr’s Hospital between 1970 and 1983.

Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients’ Association said this latest breach of confidentiality was “very disturbing”. “It’s not the quantity of private personal records that matters, it’s the fact that private personal records were discovered in this way.

“This calls now for a full risk assessment as to how these personal records were lost and found, the management of the records in the hospital, the security arrangements in place, the decision to dispose of them and the people who were trusted to dispose of them.”

He said it would be helpful if all hospitals undertook a similar exercise.

“It’s particularly worrying because it’s not the first time. It suggests that there is a weakness in the management and control of the most important information held by hospitals — the patient records.”

The HSE said an investigation was taking place at Letterkenny General. It said once the full details of the incident were established, it would take whatever action was appropriate.