The Alfred Hospital pharmacist spies on thousands of patient records

pWere sorry this feature is currently unavailable Were working to restore it Please try again laterppAdd articles to your saved list and come back to them any timeppAbout 7000 Alfred Health patients are victims of a privacy breach after a pharmacist working at Victorias leading trauma hospital accessed personal medical records without authorisationppAlfred Health wrote to every patient affected in a letter sent on Monday seen by The Age which said the pharmacist was dismissed after an investigation launched in June found they had used the hospitals electronic database to view records over four years without a clinical reason to do soppThe pharmacist was working at The Alfred hospital when they accessed the patient recordsCredit Luis AscuippThe letter said the healthcare workers motivation couldnt be determined but they had told investigators they were curious to see records which included those of fellow staff membersppInformation viewed included patient names birthdays Medicare numbers home addresses nextofkin details and medical information such as diagnoses clinician notes test results and treatment particulars No financial information was accessibleppAlfred Health said cybersecurity experts had determined the risk of personal information being misused was extremely lowppProfessor Andrew Way chief executive of Alfred Health apologised to affected patientsppAccessing patient information when not directly involved in a patients care is completely unacceptable and we unreservedly apologise for the healthcare workers misconduct Way said in a statementppThere is no evidence that the former employee kept a copy of any data shared data online or otherwise misused patient data Out of an abundance of caution we will continue to monitor this situation and we will let patients know if this changesppTo make sure this doesnt happen again we are introducing additional monitoring that will better detect unusual behaviour in our electronic medical record system while still providing seamless patient careppThe Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency has been contacted for comment after Alfred Health said it had referred the breach to themppThe Australian Digital Health Agency and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner were also notifiedppOur Breaking News Alert will notify you of significant breaking news when it happens Get it here ppCopyright 2023p