Child takes patient records to school to use ‘as drawing paper’

Bedfordshire Hospitals Foundation Trust has launched an internal probe to understand how the child got hold of the documents.

The incident in March was reported in the trust’s information governance quarterly board report.

It said the pupil arrived at the primary school with “numerous handover sheets” from various dates in 2022 which they had “apparently been using as drawing paper”. 

“Approx 150 patients information was on the sheets. School staff removed these from the child’s possession and IG governance manager visited the school to collect them.”

The trust said it was alerted by the school data projection officer over a child having sheets with patient identifiable information. 

It said the information governance manager went to collect the papers on the same day and they were securely destroyed. 

Bedfordshire Hospitals FT said the incident was declared as a data breach but was not escalated to the Information Commissioner’s Office as it was contained.

HSJ has asked if the child had a parent or family member at the trust.