Mansfield General Hospital Data Breach (2012)

Private medical records belonging to Mansfield residents which were unearthed by an urban explorer at the towns former General Hospital were removed by health officials on Friday after Chad.co.uk highlighted the issue on Thursday. The urban explorer - who wishes only to be known as Mango - found boxes of medical notes, prescriptions and mortuary certificates dating back to the 1960s in a cellar at the derelict West Hill Drive site. Doctors diaries, financial records and the medical history of children living on streets nearby the hospital were also discovered. On Friday, Lucy Dadge, commercial director of Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: Mansfield General Hospital was closed over 20 years ago, and the building has been in private ownership for some time now. We would have expected that all records would have been safely transferred prior to the closure. Whilst Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS FT was not responsible for the running of the hospital or its closure, we consider ensuring security of patient information as paramount. As soon as we became aware of this issue we took immediate steps to find the current owner of the building, and later today we will begin the retrieval of any records found. These will be stored securely at Kings Mill Hospital before considering what actions to take in relation to the future storage or destruction of the records.