The Patients Association responds to NHS data loss

28 Feb 2017 10:34 AM

Katherine Murphy, Chief Executive Officer of The Patients Association, said: “The recent reports about data losses within the NHS have the hallmarks of an emerging scandal.

“I was shocked to hear that NHS England has set up a team to establish the extent of patient harm. This is not merely some bureaucratic bungle, but a serious failure with real life consequences.

“If the cause of the failure was an outsourced service, as reports suggest, this shows the vital importance of managing contracts with providers to the NHS properly and making sure that they are delivering a high-quality service for the public.

“This episode has the potential to be hugely damaging to patient care in the future. Effective data sharing is vital to running and planning NHS services, and also to medical research, but patients must have confidence in the security of their data before they will consent to its use.

“These developments put this at serious risk: NHS England must issue a full statement today about the situation, as a first step towards restoring patient trust. Patients trust the NHS to look after their confidential information and this confidence is now eroded.”

Notes for Editors

The full story can be found at www.theguardian.com: ‘NHS accused of covering up huge data loss that put thousands at risk’