Confidential health records missing

Confidential health records of more than 38,000 patients have gone missing after a computer back-up tape was lost by a courier firm, an NHS trust has confirmed.

Sandown Health Centre on the Isle of Wight sent its computer records to a specialist company to carry out checks on its software.

But the tape, which contains medical records of 38,650 current and past patients of the GP surgery dating back to July 1996, failed to arrive when it was sent back to the Isle of Wight using courier firm City Link.

A spokesman for the Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust said that the tape was feared to have been lost forever. But he explained that the back-up tape was sent away to ensure that it could be used effectively to restore information on the health centre's computer if it was damaged in a fire or other system failure.

He added that the back-up tapes were more secure than data stored on CD-rom and the health centre still had a copy of all the data meaning patients would not be affected.

He said: "The risk of the tape being misused is extremely small. The tape requires specialist computer equipment to run it and the data is password-protected.

"In addition, highly advanced computer skills and/or access to a specialist programme only normally used by GPs and the data verification company are needed to make any sense of the information on the tape."

The interim PCT chief executive Margaret Pratt said: "Although there is very little chance of anyone being able to do anything untoward with this tape, should they find it, it is potentially a very serious loss of confidential information.

Dr Peter Randall, senior partner at the Sandown Health Centre, added: "We have another copy of the back-up tape and our main computer records system is not affected by this. So we still have access to all the information we need and patient care is not compromised in any way."

A City Link spokesman said: "Naturally we are concerned about the loss of our customer's consignment and a rigorous search continues.An investigation is under way and we are doing everything in our power to resolve this situation."

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