Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust told Out-Law.com that hard drives containing patient data had been sold on the auction website by a contractor it employed to destroy them. A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said the watchdog had proposed fining the Trust £375,000 over the incident. The Trust has challenged the suggested penalty.
"We were the victims of a crime," Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust said in a statement. "We subcontracted the destruction of these hard drives to a registered contractor who subsequently sold them on eBay."
"As soon as we were alerted to this we informed the police and with their help we recovered all the hard drives stolen by this individual," he said. "We are confident that there is a very low risk of any of the data from them having passed into the public domain. We have subsequently received a Notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office proposing a fine of £375,000 which we are, in the circumstances, challenging."
Under the Data Protection Act (DPA) organisations must take "appropriate technical and organisational measures ... against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data". The law requires organisations to be extra protective over sensitive personal data, such as patient medical records.
In a statement the ICO said it is "currently making inquiries into a possible breach of the Data Protection Act and is unable to speculate on what action will be taken at this time."
The data was lost from Brighton General Hospital in September 2010, according to a report by the BBC.
Under the DPA the ICO has the power to issue penalties of up to £500,000 for serious data breaches. The ICO can issue notices indicating to organisations responsible for the data what punishment, if any, it considers appropriate for the breach but can decide to alter or withdraw the proposed penalty in a final determination if representations made by those organisations persuade it to do so.
The biggest fine the ICO has ever issued is £130,000. The watchdog fined Powys County Council the money after pages from a child protection report were wrongly included as part of a separate document sent to a member of the public.
The ICO recently published an information rights strategy in which it detailed its intention to give "particular regulatory attention" to health organisations as part of prioritisation of its enforcement action.