A recent BBC report, using documentary evidence from urban explorers, has found that an abandoned care home has been left with boxes of sensitive patient data strewn carelessly throughout the vacant Westbury House property in Hampshire.
Usually, when a visitor enters the communal living space of a care home, they expect to find individual orthopedic chairs circled around a television displaying horse racing or some obscure afternoon film; you do not expect to find sensitive and private information scattered, without consideration, order or care.
Following an extremely critical inspection in 2016 which viewed the poor treatment of patients as so severe that it was shut immediately, remaining residents were removed from the care home and placed in nearby homes.
Now, following the closure, the care home continues to posthumously endanger the lives of past residents by failing to adequately protect the data of those that lived in the home as well as past employees.
Within the boxes, of which there were more than seventy, lay a mass of exposed bank details, medical history, full names, addresses and phone numbers of the vulnerable people and their relatives which the home were supposed to protect.
According to the BBC report, the property owner, Dr Usha Naqvi, is in dispute with the local authority over who is responsible for storing and disposing of the sensitive data, insisting that the home and local authority should have removed all sensitive information before the doors were locked for the final time.
Whilst Dr Naqvi maintains that, to her knowledge, the data was stored in a locked basement and she is unaware of how it ended up in the communal living space, there is an issue of protecting the information from the majority of the population that should not have access to it. She has now employed a company to sensitively destroy the information before more urban explorers break into the property and inadvertently film the sensitive information and details held in the documents..
However, as we age and rely upon these services in later life, there is a concern that the data we entrust to care homes may not be as safe as we would originally anticipate.
A recent study, published in the Lancet Public Health journal, analysed the speculated health needs of the elderly between 2015 and 2035. The headline figure predicts that those aged 85 plus, requiring 24-hour care, will double by 2035.
Furthermore, it predicts that a million people aged over 65 will also need similar 24-hour care by 2035, putting a complete strain on an already struggling system.
The study highlighted the fact that the fastest growing demographic in the UK is elderly people aged over 85. This trend is unlikely to change with estimations that current numbers of 1.6 million people will increase to over 3 million people by 2035.
When the health authorities are currently struggling to provide care for the 2.4% of the UK’s entire population that is already over 85, anxieties will intensify as to how it can help this section of society if these expected numbers materialise.
If care homes are under increasing pressure to ensure the safety of the residents living in their care, the issue of how their data is stored, maintained and kept safe could become an afterthought.
Sharon Eppey, relative of a prior resident of Westbury House Nursing Home, said:
“I’m just amazed that it’s not been dealt with properly and it has been left like that.
“Personal details, you just assume that they’ve been dealt with. I’m just in shock! When is it all right to treat people’s information like this? Why wouldn’t they close up a business and get rid of information like this?”
Are you already finding that health authorities are struggling to cope with the ageing population? How concerning are these issues?
