Pharmacy dumps confidential patient information on the street

A pharmacy in Rotterdam has dumped two rubbish bags on the street containing medical information about over 100 people, website nu.nl reported on Wednesday.


The bags were found by a source who handed them over to nu.nl. They contained medication lists, prescriptions, till receipts, medicine labels and returned medicine, plus addresses and correspondence.
Nu.nl says it was able to reconstruct the medical history of over 100 people using the information. In some cases, it was also able to find out people’s jobs.
The pharmacy, which says it is suffering from an acute shortage of staff, says procedures have now been improved to make sure it will not happen again.
Scandals
There have been a number of scandals in the Netherlands involving medical records in recent months.
In March, television current affairs show Zembla reported the Netherlands’ biggest private health and safety firm (arbodienst) had been passing confidential medical information to employers.
And earlier this month, it emerged medical and personal details of hundreds of thousands of patients of the Groene Hart hospital in Gouda were publicly available for years because of a badly protected computer.

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