PRIVACY campaigners last night called for a cut in the number of health workers who can access your personal records.

The call came after the Oxford Mail learned 2,000 non-medical employees – including administration staff and receptionists – can see the files.

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust has been ranked joint fourth out of 140 trusts for allowing the largest number of non-clinical staff to access files. It means people who are not surgeons, doctors or nurses, could find out your recent medical history.

The news comes as NHS Oxfordshire prepares to join a controversial electronic database – the Summary Care Record – which makes files even easier to access.

The statistics were revealed by privacy campaign group, Big Brother Watch, which submitted a Freedom of Information request to the trust.

It wanted to know how many staff who were not directly involved in the treatment of patients had access to records at the John Radcliffe and Churchill hospitals in Oxford, and The Horton in Banbury.

Campaign director Dylan Sharpe said: “The huge number of non-medical personnel with access to confidential patient records in the ORH – almost three times the national average – leaves the system wide open for abuse.”

The ORH said current records, which are on paper in health record libraries, were open to 2,000 of its 10,000 strong workforce, including administrative staff, secretaries, ward clerks, and complaints staff, but not porters or cleaners.

Andrew Stevens, director of planning and information at the ORH said: “All of our staff are bound by strict codes of confidentiality.

“As such, staff only have access to confidential patient records on a ‘need to know’ basis. This also means any information staff do access must be kept confidential.

“As one of the largest NHS trusts in the country – with more than 10,000 staff – it is to be expected that we employ more staff who require access to patient records than other smaller trusts.”

But Mr Sharpe said: “We believe it is necessary to drastically reduce the number of people with access to medical records to prevent the high rate of data loss experienced by the NHS.

“The Government needs urgently to address the dire state of security around our medical history before it rolls out the Summary Care Record, granting access to hundreds of thousands of additional NHS staff.”

The Summary Care Record system, expected to start in Oxfordshire within two years, will make it easier for health staff to access patient information.

But GPs have voiced concerns over the system, claiming it will be open to corruption. Dr Prit Buttar, a GP at the Abingdon Surgery, said: “There is limited evidence of the benefits. I can list several occasions when the Government has lost such important information. And people are corruptible.”

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