Saturday 18 July 2015

Jeremy Hunt tweets photo with in-patient names clearly visible

 
Jeremy Hunt is not having a great day and my heart bleeds.  Having attacked and denigrated NHS staff as he continues his campaign of destroying the NHS as a publicly delivered service, poor Jeremy made the error of tweeting a photo of himself posing within a hospital ward with hospital staff.

Unfortunately for Jeremy he tweeted this photo and contained within was a board listing all the patients on that particular ward.  The patient names were clearly visible.  If a doctor did such a thing, they could expect definite consequences.  As things stand the tweet stayed up for a good few hours, then was replaced by a new tweet with the patient board fuzzed through.  There has been no apology or admission of this confidentiality breach as yet.

I would urge everyone to write to the Department of Health via their online complaints form below.  At the very least Jeremy Hunt should apologise for his tweet and apologise to all those whose names were clearly visible in the original photo.  He is a senior public official and should know far better, after all isn't candour something he feels strongly about?
 
 
"Dear DH
 
I would like to make a formal complaint about Jeremy Hunt's tweet on the 17/07/2015 (see attached screen grab).
 
The photo shows patient identifiable information clearly on a board in the top left of the photo.
This tweet constitutes a clear breach of the Data Protection Act.
 
I expect this matter to be thoroughly investigated and at an absolute minimum Jeremy Hunt should issue a full and frank apology to the patients whose confidentiality he has clearly breached,
 
regards"

3 comments:

Zeno said...

If it was a possible breach of the Data Protection Act, it should be a matter for the Information Commissioner to deal with.

ben said...

Nope - only go to ICO if DH response inadequate - it is job of the DH (relevant government department) to deal with initial complaint....

Tinactin said...

If that's the reality, it would be great for the government as well as the patient and for us. Just hoping it will continually doing something good from the Doctor or even a Nurse when the patients complaints and have something to tell about it.