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Queen Mary Hospital announces incident of mishandling in mailing of patient Admission/Appointment Slips
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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:

     The spokesperson for Queen Mary Hospital (QMH) made the following announcement today (November 16) regarding an incident of mishandling in the mailing of patient Admission/Appointment Slips:
 
     QMH was informed on November 6 about a patient case of incorrect mailing of an Admission Slip. An Admission Slip containing the name and Hong Kong identity card (HKID) number of another patient was received by the informant, who had been expecting an Appointment Slip for a Specialist Out-patient Clinic. The hospital immediately traced and contacted all of the 24 patients who were in the same batch of mailing records.
 
     It was confirmed after thorough checking that a total of eight patients had been affected. One of them had received an incorrect Admission Slip while the rest received incorrect Appointment Slips showing partial HKID numbers. Following initial investigation, it was suspected that the Appointment Slips and Admission Slips had been mixed up during preparation for mailing by staff.
 
     The hospital has already contacted all of the patients concerned to express apologies. They all agreed to return the mishandled slips to the hospital. It is therefore believed that the risk of exposing the personal data of the patients involved was relatively low. The clinical management of the patients has been confirmed as being unaffected. The incident has been reported to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data and also to the Hospital Authority Head Office through the Advance Incident Reporting System.
 
     The hospital is very concerned about the incident and has reminded all staff members to strictly comply with the requirement of proper checking when mailing Appointment Slips and Admission Slips. In-depth review of the workflow will also be conducted to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
 
Ends/Thursday, November 16, 2017
Issued at HKT 18:30
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