The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined a Primary Care Trust £100,000 (of our tax payers money!) after the organisation abandoned a large number of patient records when moving premises.
The now dissolved health trust left over 1000 documents behind at their old offices. These files included work diaries, letters, referral forms and patient records containing personal information. Some of the documents contained sensitive personal data, including details of miscarriages, child protection issues and, in one case, a police report relating to the death of a child.
The ICO have repeatedly warned organisations about their duty of care regarding historical paper records, however, two organisation have still been fined for leaving large volumes of personal information behind when leaving a site in the last year.
With businesses changing hands and being merged into other companies, there is always a risk that some important information is left vulnerable, however every organisation, no matter how small, should have someone responsible for protecting their data and it's about time that business owners took this matter seriously.
Image courtesy of ScottChan / Freedigitalimages.net
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