Telford woman's horror as patient records found in filing cabinets
A Telford woman has spoken of her horror after discovering personal information about mentally ill patients in a filing cabinet bought on eBay.
Amy Shotton found a total of 16 case files detailing the sexual abuse of patients and their suicide attempts and a further 20 files with the names of other patients.
In total there were more than 60 pages of documents containing confidential details of patients with the former Wolverhampton NHS Primary Care Trust.
An investigation has now been launched by health bosses into the blunder.
The 24 year old paid £51 for 11 cabinets and seven chairs via eBay and they were delivered to her home, in Ketley, last month.
But she only found the sensitive files, which contained data including patients' bank account details, after the cabinets were transported to the home of her boyfriend Nick Helliwell in Halifax, Yorkshire, where they found them on June 9.
The former office worker, of Wedgewood Crescent, said: "I was staggered when I saw them. I think it's frightening. It was the fact that some of the details were so harrowing.
"It was stuff that I wouldn't have wanted other people to know about if it was me. I really feel for those people.
"The information included psychological assessments and case histories. When I saw them I cried. It's the thought that people are living with a lot and they have finally found the courage to tell somebody what has happened to them, only to be betrayed by the information being left lying in an unwanted cabinet for someone else to find. It's just not good enough," she said.
Miss Shotton said the documents have since been handed over to the trust.
A spokeman for the Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said: "The trust can confirm that it has been informed about a possible breach of patient confidentiality.
"The facts of the case are not yet clear. We are carrying out a full investigation in conjunction with our partner organisations, the City of Wolverhampton Council and Wolverhampton Clinical Commissioning Group, to understand how this happened.
"We take patient confidentiality very seriously and apologise for any distress this has caused," said the spokesman.
