NHS staff details ‘lost in post’

Personal details of almost 18,000 NHS employees based in London have gone missing, it has emerged.

Workers at Camden Primary Care Trust, Camden and Islington Foundation Trust, Islington Primary Care Trust and Whittington Hospital NHS Trust itself are thought to be affected by the loss.

The details of 17,990 former and current staff were included on four computer discs which were sent from Whittington Hospital NHS Trust to payroll IT services provider McKesson in July 2008, the Press Association reports.

Included on the disc were the name, date of birth, start date, pay details and national insurance number of all employees, as well as the addresses of some.

David Sloman, chief executive of the trust, said: “It is trust policy to send any such information by courier.”

He added that an investigation is underway, while a member of staff has been suspended following the incident.

The trust claims the personal ban account details of employees were not present on the now missing discs.

It added that each of the discs had a separate alpha-numeric password, which would be very difficult to break unless found by expert hackers.

Earlier this month, the Health Service Journal warned of the potential for a data loss incident within the health service, with many doctors carrying around identifiable and sensitive patient data on unprotected memory sticks.