Health chiefs in Colchester fired a senior manager who lost
confidential records on thousands of patients after his hospital
laptop was stolen.
The computer reportedly included 21,000 patients' names, their
dates of birth, postcodes and treatments.
The unnamed manager at
Colchester Hospital
University NHS Foundation Trust in Essex had taken the laptop
with him on holiday to Edinburgh. A thief stole the laptop after
breaking into the manager's car.
Patients were sent letters about the security blunder, the
latest in a series of
data losses by public bodies.
The letters said that the computer was password-protected, but
the data on it was
not encrypted.
The hospital's chief executive, Peter Murphy, announced that the
manager was dismissed with immediate effect after a disciplinary
hearing on Friday.
He said, "The unanimous decision of the disciplinary panel sends
out a clear statement about how seriously the trust takes
security and patient confidentiality. I again apologise for the
distress the theft of this laptop may have caused."
Murphy also said that the hospital will call in a consultancy to
carry out an independent assessment of the trust's procedures on
data security.