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Major cock up at St Andrews Surgery.

On 18 Mar 2015 at 11:58pm Ex Patient wrote:

Dear Patient It has come to our attention that an email has recently been sent out containing the email addresses of a substantial number of patients which should have been blind copied.
We recognise the seriousness of this error and would like to apologise unreservedly. We would also like to strongly reassure you that no additional demographic or medical information has been shared or would be accessible through inappropriate use of these email addresses.

We have immediately discussed this as a significant event amongst the Partners and Practice Manager and have consulted our Caldicott Guardian Dr Gail Ball and have sought to understand the sequence of events leading to this error. We are taking steps to ensure that the future risk of such human error is absolutely minimised.

We are keen to use developments in IT to the benefit of patients and the practice and will use this as a learning event to ensure it does not prevent development of future IT based patient services.

We would kindly ask you to delete the previous email. Please rest assured that we have taken this incident very seriously, and having already received queries from some of you, would hope this email now reassures you.

If you do have any further queries, please email Shelley Christou (Practice Manager) on [email protected]

Yours sincerely,

The Partners
St Andrew's Surgery
********************************************************************************************************************

On 19 Mar 2015 at 6:13am Very Patient wrote:

Hardly a major cock-up, email addresses put into a cc box instead of bcc. Seems like a positive response to a minor IT training issue.

On 19 Mar 2015 at 7:41am Reassured wrote:

i am reassured.

On 19 Mar 2015 at 8:24am Southover Queen wrote:

It's a major and serious breach of the Data Protection Act, which accounts for the tenor of the email.

On 19 Mar 2015 at 8:35am 3 Tenors wrote:

O M G the spambots will be after me now

On 19 Mar 2015 at 3:37pm Explain wrote:

It is bad for a number of reasons. Firstly, it seems they have provided patients with other patient's confidential e-mails. Secondly, if the original was a generic e-mail being sent to a target group of patients, they would have inadvertently broadcast a list of people with a particular health need. It is very bad, as Southover Queen says, hence the response. The big deal is obviously not the minor technical cause, it is what this has done that is very serious.

On 19 Mar 2015 at 3:51pm Old Bike wrote:

Meanwhile in Tunisia....

On 19 Mar 2015 at 6:09pm The Colonel wrote:

Ex Patient, Get A Life.

On 20 Mar 2015 at 7:50am Bogey wrote:

you lot get up my nose

On 20 Mar 2015 at 11:10am New Bike wrote:

I don't think anyone was comparing the gravity of this with Tunisia. That would be ridiculous.

On 20 Mar 2015 at 5:03pm Dirke wrote:

I don't understand why lots of people seem to think this isn't a serious matter. I wouldn't like my email shared with the world at general, especially as it's from my local doctor.

On 20 Mar 2015 at 5:11pm Sussex Jim wrote:

wether it is Major Cockup or Colonel Bogey who is responsible; it is a serious breach of security. But in this case no real harm seems to have been done. The person responsible should be severly reprimanded; but not sacked.