GP Surgery discloses Medical Records to third party without permission

Discovery

Irvings Law have successfully represented a client in a data breach compensation claim against Charlton Medical Centre; the client wishes to remain anonymous for the purposes of this case report.

The client was a former patient of Charlton Medical Centre whom contacted him early last year to advise that they had disclosed his medical records to a third party. Charlton Medical Centre did not have the client’s consent to do this and such a disclosure to a third party was a serious breach of his personal medical information which included:

• His name and address
• Sensitive information in regards to his physical health and history
• His current medical issues
• His medication history

Thankfully, when informing the client about this serious incident, Charlton Medical Centre apologised for what they had done but this was not enough for the client.

Representation

As such, the client found our firm, Irvings Law, and contacted Yvonne Dobson who agreed the breach was severe and offered no win no fee terms to the client without hesitation before then presenting a Letter of Claim on behalf of the client to Charlton Medical Centre.

Resolution

Unfortunately, Charlton Medical Centre failed to respond to the Letter of Claim or engage with Yvonne despite numerous chasers. Due to the behaviour of Charlton Medical Centre, Yvonne informed Charlton Medical Centre that she would now be advising her client to issue Court proceedings. After preparing such proceedings and prior to lodging them at Court the client gave Charlton Medical Centre a final chance to settled matters and so after valuation advice from Yvonne, instructed her to seek to settle his claim in the sum of £5,500.00 plus his legal costs. This offer finally lead to Charlton Medical Centre responding to Yvonne but clearly, their responses were further attempts to delay the issuing of the client’s claim. Following additional correspondence with Charlton Medical Centre, they made a cost-inclusive offer of £7,500.00; the said cost-inclusive offer was to cover the client’s damages and legal costs.

As the client’s incurred legal costs were more than £2,000.00 after the work Yvonne had done, the insurance premium payable by Charlton Medical Centre and specialist Barrister fees, Yvonne advised the client to reject the cost-inclusive offer and issue Court proceedings. Following Yvonne’s advice, the client instructed Yvonne to do as advised but after informing Charlton Medical Centre about doing this, they accepted the client’s £5,500.00 plus costs offer (which are to be assessed in due course by the Court of no agreement is reached) and also accepted they had breached the client’s personal information, apologised for this and confirmed they had put into place practices that would significantly reduce the risk of this type of data breach occurring again.