NHS data loss: 173 instances of likely patient harm identified

The NHS has identified 173 instances of likely patient harm arising from the loss of half a million pieces of confidential medical correspondence such as test results and treatment plans.

An update from the Department of Health sent to MPs on the public accounts committee said it was reviewing the recovered documents and had already found 173 cases that “require further clinical review”.

Another 364 cases were also urgently being reviewed to see if patient harm had resulted from the lost correspondence. Officials said they hoped that the 537 currently being scrutinised would represent the upper limit of the number of people affected.

The figures emerged as the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was forced to make a statement in parliament on Monday afternoon and answer MPs in response to urgent questions tabled by Labour and the Liberal Democrats following the Guardian’s revelations.

“Let’s be under no illusions: this is a catastrophic breach of data protection,” said Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary.

”Over half a million patients’ data, including blood tests results, cancer screening results, biopsy results, even correspondence relating to cases of child protection - all undelivered.

“They were languishing in a warehouse on the secretary of state’s watch. It’s an absolute scandal. He can’t deliver the investment our NHS needs, he can’t deliver a social care solution, he can’t deliver patient safety and now he can’t even deliver the post.”

But Hunt denied that the correspondence had been “lost” during the five years it went missing. In that time, it was being held securely and no breach of patient confidentiality occurred because no one accessed it, he told MPs. However, he acknowledged that NHS Shared Business Services had blundered by not getting the documents to GPs as they should have.

Hunt denied Labour claims of a cover-up. He told MPs that he first became aware of the loss of documents on 23 March 2016 and took his civil servants’ advice not to acknowledge it in case anxious patients overwhelmed already busy GP surgeries seeking information.

However, he added, last July he overruled further advice from his officials and made a brief statement to parliament disclosing that the NHS’s postal services had made the error, but his 138-word statement did not mention the scale of the misplaced records or that patients may have been harmed.

The 173 cases of likely patient harm were unearthed as part of a review of 2,500 documents that had been “triaged as potential high risk of harm” in a letter sent to the committee by Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health (DoH), to the public accounts committee.

In a separate hearing of the public accounts committee, Meg Hillier, the chair, accused officials of overseeing an “unedifying” turn of events which had resulted in a major “cock up” that has dragged on for nearly a year.

Chris Wormald, the DoH’s permanent secretary, said there are still 537 “live cases” that require further inquiries. “I think we have 537 live cases of which 173 already require further explanation,” he said.

Asked about the live cases, he said that many of those identified cannot be contacted. “We are still trying to track down the person, either because they have left the country or have not signed up with a GP or we are still waiting for the GP’s initial assessment.”

Health officials said the internal inquiries began when they were notified last March of the loss of more than 700,000 pieces of correspondence. To date, 500,000 of those have been scrutinised, with about 200,000 more being temporary residence forms. Of the remaining forms, 2,500 required further update, and of those 1091 have been confirmed as being of no harm.

Asked if the NHS knows how seriously patient safety has been put at risk, and whether the patients could include people with serious blood conditions that require further investigation, Sir Simon Stevens admitted that they could be serious.

“By definition the small number of cases that are left are those we want to chase down, they have had a clinical review initially and now contact is being made with the GP where that is possible to identify,” he said.

A public accounts committee meeting in September last year raised questions over lost documents referred to in the DoH’s annual accounts, which were released on 21 July 2016, the last day before parliament’s summer recess.

On the same day in July, Hunt released a short statement that expressed “regret” for data lost by NHS Shared Business Services, but did not go into detail about the scale of the losses.

At the time, Hunt said: “This service was limited to three geographical areas – north-east London, the south-west of England and the east Midlands – and was delivered as part of the primary care support service we provided for NHS England. This service was commissioned by NHS England to attempt to trace and redirect correspondence intended for a patient’s GP, but which was initially sent by the originating sender to the wrong GP practice.

“We would like to express our regret for this situation, and we are working with NHS England to return all delayed correspondence to GP practices for filing in medical records as quickly as possible.”

On Sunday night, the Guardian revealed that the NHS mislaid 500,000 items of internal post between 2011 and 2016. Over the past few months, after the mistake was discovered, a secretly assembled team has been reviewing what impact this may have had on patients around England.

The updates given to parliament are the first time officials have spelled out how many people may have been seriously affected.