Six employees of the Bravis Hospital in Brabant recently received an official warning because they looked in a patient file when they were not allowed to. The employees were not involved in the treatment of the patient, but they were curious, the hospital writes in a by Broadcasting Brabant seen message to staff.
The hospital has locations in Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom. For reasons of privacy, it is not disclosed which branch the issue is at.
According to the hospital, the employees have seen a file of a patient who had been admitted to die for several months. “The staff were not involved in the actual treatment of the patient,” the hospital writes.
Medical data in novel
The hospital has investigated the case and says the employees looked at the file because they felt concerned or were curious. “These kinds of reasons are by definition illegal and will be punished immediately.” The incident came to light in a random sample. The patient’s family has been notified. Notification has also been made to the Dutch Data Protection Authority.
In the internal message, the hospital asks staff to be alert to unauthorized file access and to guarantee the privacy of patients. “Patients in Bravis Hospital trust that their (medical) data is handled with care. This means that every time you look in a patient file, you must have a legitimate reason to do so,” the hospital writes. . “Make sure you can account for every inspection.”
At the end of last year, the hospital was also in the news because of unauthorized access to files. Then wrote NRC about a woman who read back her medical records in a novel written by her ex-husband. The new wife of her ex worked at the Bravis Hospital in Roosendaal. There she turned out to have illegally checked her and her family’s medical records at least 379 times
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