Nosy neighbours are bad enough, but this is worse than peering through the net curtains. Health Service Journal (June 26) reports that trusts do not punish staff caught snooping on patients' records.

Sian Thomas, the acting joint director of NHS Employers, told the NHS Confederation's annual conference that there was evidence that trusts around the country were letting staff off the hook for breaking data privacy rules. In many cases there had been no consequences for the people involved - and this was particularly true for doctors.

Thomas says that one of the problems is staff passing around smart cards, which provide access to patients' medical records and prescriptions. And with the extension of the summary care record and choose and book, Thomas says that it is vital that trusts have robust processes to deal with staff who abuse patient data.

But which patient are they talking about? In another records blunder, Nursing Times (June 24) reports that so-called unique NHS numbers - which identify patients and their care records - are in some cases shared by two patients. NHS numbers are allocated to babies at birth, or when a patient joins the NHS.

Is patient data being abused?

Evidence suggests that NHS trusts around the country are letting staff off the hook for breaking data privacy rules

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The problem was raised during a panel debate involving senior health service IT representatives at the NHS Connecting for Health annual conference for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. Michael Thick, chief clinical officer for NHS Connecting for Health, said he was “deeply concerned” and would raise the issue with ministers.

Sharon Levy, informatics adviser at the Royal College of Nursing, says: “You are putting patients at risk if the records in front of you are referring to the wrong patient and you are making clinical decisions. This issue needs to be addressed, but it is inevitable in such a large database.”

More funds for dementia

An old saying but true: prevention is better than cure. No more so than in dementia, a condition for which only 30 per cent of sufferers receive a diagnosis, often in the later stages of the illness, Community Care (June 26) reports.

Government advisers have urged that more than £200 million a year should be invested in early diagnosis and intervention for people with dementia. Some GPs do not diagnose because of a perception that nothing can be done to help.

“We need to look at where we are to stop people going into residential care unnecessarily,” says Jenny Owen, vice-president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, which is co-leading on the first national dementia strategy.

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