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February 7, 2008

Medical mag FOI probe uncovers 4,000 lost patient ID cards

By Patrick

An investigation by medical magazine Pulse has found that more than 4,000 “smartcards” containing patients’ personal information have been lost be NHS staff.

After Freedom of Information Act requests to hundreds of health authorities, Pulse found that 4,174 cards have gone missing, after the government invested some £12.4bn on an NHS patient database.

Nearly 430,000 NHS staff have been issued with the cards, with the number of patient records in the scheme expected to reach 1.2m.  

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