The incident revolves around an error by NHS Shared Business Services, a joint venture between the U.K. Department of Health and IT consulting company Sopra Steria, which was contracted to redirect select NHS mail in need of re-routing. A backlog consisting of at least 709,000 patient notes piled up in a NHS SBS warehouse between 2011 and 2016, including cancer test results and child protection notes.
The 709,000 patient notes comprised the biggest loss of patient documents at NHS to date, according to The Register. However, a team tasked with examining the incident uncovered an additional 162,000 undelivered documents at the warehouse and at local offices across the country during the course of its ongoing investigation.
NHS England CEO Simon Stevens said Oct. 16 NHS expects to deliver patient records to the appropriate general practitioners by the end of December for initial assessment. The goal is to complete the entire project by March 2018.
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