A disabled Scot fighting to obtain his neonatal medical records was horrified to discover personal information about an unrelated child in his file.
Christopher Walker, from Ayrshire, made a Subject Access Request via NHS Ayrshire and Arran last summer after being struck down by ill health.
The 37-year-old, who suffers from osteoarthritis, believes his medical records could help him obtain a formal diagnosis for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome - a chronic connective tissue disorder that affects his entire body.
He had grown increasingly frustrated after finding all information relating to the first 12 months of his life missing from his file.
But he then spotted confidential data about a young child that had been enclosed in the bundles of documents given to him by Galston Medical Practice.
Christopher immediately reported the data breach to health chiefs and contacted MSP Jackie Baillie for help to find his missing records.
But shockingly, another document relating to an elderly couple from Edinburgh was accidentally included in the response from the politician’s office.
Christopher, a former digital regulatory compliance officer said: “It’s disgusting that medical records - some of the most important information about a person’s life - can be mistreated so badly.
“I feel like I’ve been rather let down by the system but now I've got evidence that people have really been mucking things up along the way.
“If this can happen to me twice then how many others could also be affected across the whole health board, if not country?
“Mismanaged records could end up being a matter of life or death for somebody.
“I’ve taken this issue to the health board. I’ve taken it to MSPs. But nobody will touch it with a barge pole and not a single person has been held accountable.
“And the question still remains - where are my neonatal records? I shouldn’t have to fight this hard to get answers about something that I’m entitled to know.
“I want to be able to rule out malpractice from when I was a baby. I should be able to see observations that were made on me and how on earth some things have been missed.”
Christopher, who began experiencing excruciating pain in 2020 which left him bedridden, noticed additional information from 2012 missing from his folder.
This data has since been added in after being electronically transferred from a previous GP surgery where he was treated.
He also discovered that he had been diagnosed with ADHD in 1987 but was never informed after becoming estranged from his parents.
In a bid to get answers, he then contacted Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie to see if she could help.
But in an email response from the politician’s office, Christopher found a letter from an elderly couple in Edinburgh who were expressing concerns about the Covid jabs.
He explained: “When I received the response from Jackie Baillie’s office, it was so terrible that it was almost funny. You couldn’t make it up.
“I’ve come to discover that I have lived my life chronically disabled without realising because everything looked totally fine on the outside, everyone thought I was fine on the inside.
“The pain that I’ve been through in the last couple of years is abhorrent. I’m not a person who has suicidal thoughts but there’s been times when my mind has gone that low.
“Growing up I always had people telling me I was too skinny and I should put on some weight but it’s not that I’ve been skinny, it’s symptoms of my illness.
“I’m only coming to realise that after going through a couple of years of intensive hydrotherapy and physiotherapy. But I’m disgusted at the way that people don’t give a monkeys about my records.
“I’ve got a right to know what’s wrong with me and if somebody has done something wrong along the way.”
Craig McArthur, Director of East Ayrshire Health & Social Care Partnership said: “When patients move GP practices, it is the responsibility of the previous GP practice to forward all medical documentation to the new GP practice where patients are re-registering.
“When requested by a patient, GP practices provide the medical records they hold to patients and Galston Medical Practice did so when requested on this occasion.
“It was noted by the patient that there was missing information from their record, dating from a period when registered at a different medical practice.
“Unfortunately when the records were provided, information relating to another person was mistakenly included. The practice apologised for this error and liaised with NHS Ayrshire & Arran’s Information Governance Team.
“The information was reviewed and ascertained it was minimal information which could not easily identify the patient or cause any harm. Galston Medical Practice has since reviewed their processes to ensure this does not happen again.
“As the patient is no longer registered at Galston Medical Practice, all medical records they held have been transferred to the new GP practice as per normal protocols.”
Jackie Baillie has also apologised and stressed that additional checks are now in place.
She said: “I take any breach of data protection seriously. In this case, there was a genuine error made and my office apologised to Mr Walker and he agreed to destroy the material immediately.
“We have since put in additional procedures to stop this from happening again.”
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