More than 1600 medical letters were found dumped in a Sydney rubbish bin, breaching the privacy of 700 patients
More than 1600 medical letters were found dumped in a Sydney rubbish bin, breaching the privacy of, and potentially delaying the care for, at least 700 patients.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said a sub-contractor of Global Transcription Services, a company used to send medical letters from specialists to GPs, was to blame for the incident.
Minister Hazzard said the subcontractor was suffering from significant health problems which had led to her dumping the letters outside an apartment block instead of sending them to the recipients.
“It’s completely unacceptable …We have to get right to the bottom of what has gone wrong here,” Mr Hazzard told Fairfax Media.
“This is a human system and things can go wrong occasionally … but I want to be satisfied that we are doing everything possible to reduce the risk of human error.”
The letters, which were found on April 11, included follow-up and treatment-progress information for patients from between December 2016 and January 2017.
This included patients who were visiting cancer clinics for chemotherapy.
Initial reviews suggested that no patients had been put at risk by the dumped letters, but there was the potential that treatment had been delayed, according to Mr Hazzard.
Fairfax Media reported that the NSW Health Minister had launched an independent review into the processes of transcription services used across the state.
