Health Secretary Calls the NHS Records Breaches a Disgrace
Yvette Cooper said staff accessing the medical records of the Nottingham attack victims, and possible breaches involving a man killed by a tiger, are “a disgrace” and that “there’s got to be proper respect for patients”. One trust has now dismissed fifteen staff in total. A second organisation says records may also have been accessed improperly.
The number has climbed in stages, which is what makes it look less like a handful of individuals and more like a culture. Nottingham University Hospitals said in May it had sacked eleven people for inappropriately accessing the records of Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates, killed in June 2023; four further dismissals were confirmed on Friday, covering doctors, nurses, registered healthcare professionals and other staff. The trust has informed the nursing and medical regulators, the Information Commissioner and the police, and is testing a new alerting system; its medical director says there is “simply no excuse for accessing the records of a patient without a legitimate reason”. Police have previously said there is no criminal investigation and the Commissioner says it will assess evidence from the trust in due course. The second strand is Yorkshire Ambulance Service, which says the records of William Chapman may also have been accessed improperly. The health secretary said she expects action to be taken; she has not ordered anything specific, and this edition does not suggest otherwise.