NHS Letter regarding pers mental health issues sent to wrong address??

[think about it]

You’ve had some excellent advice from the other posters, it does indeed sound like a data breach that ICO should be aware of. 
 

I experienced something similar when managing a practice where someone’s information was mistakenly included in a letter sent to the police. Thankfully as it had passed from one authority to another the person involved wasn’t adversely affected. Nevertheless the matter was investigated, reported to the ICO and measures put in place to minimise the chance of a reoccurrence. I also contacted the individual concerned to explain what had happened. 
 

From an investigation standpoint I’d be curious about the envelope and whether or not it was franked or had a stamp, I’d want to see the handwriting to compare it to that of my colleagues and also look at checking the audit trails of the clinical systems that hold these letters to see where and when it was printed and by whom. I’d be interested to see if the information was signed as an original copy or a photocopy/print off from a scanned original. 
 

The lack of a properly addressed envelope kind of steers this away from being an administration error in a hospital setting to either a report that’s been stuffed into the wrong envelope on a pile of outgoing mail or someone with adverse intentions. 
 

Please do contact the high level complaints team via PALS, engage with your GP practice manager too although the team at the hospital should automatically involve them and ask them to conduct an internal investigation, I’m sure the PM would appreciate the ‘heads-up’. 
 

It’s entirely possible that you will not get a definitive answer as to what happened and please be reassured that this doesn’t mean there’s some sort of weird stuff happening, just that they can’t identify the source of the breach. 

[think about it]

So it’s an official envelope / franking then. That’s a good thing in some respects as the source of the letter is narrowed down significantly. The clinic manager may well be able to identify the sender by their handwriting as the pool of likely people will be quite small. 
 

I wouldn’t get too hung up about the upcoming change in exec, there’s no way on earth the existing or incoming exec would investigate this personally, it’ll go to their exec level complaints team/person and be dealt with by them. If every complaint written to the exec was investigated by the post holder they’d never have time to do their actual job. 

[think about it]

What’s important to remember here is that besides an apology and putting things into place to minimise the likelihood of it happening again there’s not much else that they can realistically do. If someone feels they need support then it’s important that they ask for it and make their expectations clear about what they need. It’s entirely possible that there will be/have been disciplinary actions taken but it’s not for the response to the complaint to specify what happened and to whom.