Two-dozen doctors have been disciplined by the UK medical regulator in the last five years after accessing and using information from patients’ treatment records without good reason.
The General Medical Council (GMC) said it had struck off two of the 24 doctors it had sanctioned after finding that they had undertaken “inappropriate use” of medical records.
Another 10 were suspended, 10 were warned about their future conduct, one had a condition imposed on their licence to practise medicine and the other had to undertake not to repeat their behaviour.
The 24 cases were among 194 incidents of doctors allegedly accessing medical records without a clinical justification that prompted a complaint to the regulator between 2017 and 2022.
Privacy campaigners said it was shocking that almost 200 people had made complaints to the GMC accusing doctors of violating patients’ confidentiality in that way.
“A GMC complaint is not a small undertaking, so this is the tip of the iceberg for the real level of [doctors’] inappropriate use [of medical records],” said Sam Smith, a spokesperson for the campaign group MedConfidential. “That this many people have been able to gather sufficient evidence to bring a GMC complaint is shocking”.
He urged NHS England to change the way the NHS app operates so that patients can automatically see which staff have accessed their records, in order to prevent inappropriate access.
The Guardian revealed last month that a “stalker” female doctor at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge accessed the records of her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend – whom she had no role in treating – and shared some of the intimate information that she obtained. The Guardian did not name the doctor or the woman whose privacy she violated. The GMC is now investigating the consultant’s behaviour.
Responding to the GMC’s figures, the victim said: “Given how unlikely it is that a patient will discover that their data has been illegitimately accessed, it is highly likely that doctors are accessing patients’ notes more often than the roughly 40 times a year that lead to someone complaining to the GMC.
“The fact that our most personal data is so widely shared with so few safeguards, I believe puts us all at risk of NHS staff examining our records without good reason.”
Earlier this year, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the GMC’s disciplinary arm, banned Dr Noel Sardar, a psychiatrist in Wales, from practising as a doctor after he was convicted in 2019 of stalking two vulnerable women with mental health problems whom he had treated. Sardar alarmed both women by calling them on their mobile phones and coming to their homes.
Last year the MPTS struck off Dr Monika Ciechanska, a London hospital doctor. The hearing in her case was told that she had accessed, or caused other people to access on her behalf, electronic patient records using other doctors’ accounts so that she could order medical tests.
The GMC reiterated that doctors should not access patients’ records without a medical reason. A spokesperson said: “Patients must have confidence that their personal information is protected at all times. Our guidance is clear. We expect doctors to make sure any personal information about patients is effectively protected at all times against improper access, disclosure or loss, and they must not access a patient’s personal information unless they have a legitimate reason to view it.”
