BendigoWeekly ISSUE 1067 FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2018
Honour the fallen WEDNESDAY was a day for reflection and remembrance for those affected by war. Once more, Bendigo residents turned out in force at both the dawn and morning services. – Anzac commemoration Page 7.
DATA DUMP Photo: ANDREW PERRYMAN
By SHARON KEMP
HEALTH records containing the private medical information of 1850 patients have been wrongfully destroyed. Bendigo Health chief executive Peter Faulkner has called in two state government advisory bodies to oversee the process of informing patients, offering clinical assessments to help reconstruct histories, and correcting procedures around information disposal. Mr Faulkner said the accidental shredding of 3150 records, 1300 of
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Bendigo Health shreds records
which were the records of deceased patients, was potentially in contravention of the Health Records Act and could result in a fine. Before contacting affected patients, he said Bendigo Health had prioritised those who were most recently treated by the organisation and were therefore more likely to be impacted by the loss of part of their medical history. About 150 patients who have
used Bendigo Health services in the past decade will be contacted first, initially by phone but then by other means if contact details have changed. Bendigo Health has also set up a 1800 number for patients who may be worried they have been affected. Mr Faulkner said the paper records would have included written notes by nursing staff including observations, the duplication of documents and letters or printed cor-
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respondence. But he said the documents were only a partial record of patients, that other records for the same patient still existed on digital files and those destroyed were only a fraction of the total 300,000 records the hospital kept. “Human error was to blame for the wrongful destruction,” Mr Faulkner said. None of the records pertained to psychiatric diagnosis or treatment,
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and none could be accessed because the information they contained was lost. “We identified that in a routine process of destruction that a number were destroyed in error. Victorian health services are guided by strict legislation governing what records can be destroyed and when. Mr Faulkner said the service had identified records that were older than the 30 years maximum limit. The limit is 12 years for records of people who have died.
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