Data protection? Zig kilo x-rays on the street

60 kilograms of x-rays with personal data found on the street

02/13/2015

After kilograms of kilograms of the clinic Weilheim in Bavaria were found on the roadside on Wednesday, the police have started the investigation. The X-rays have sensitive personal information and therefore should not come into the hands of third parties. According to media reports, the Bavarian Data Protection Supervisor Thomas Petri sees "a clear data breach" in the incident and announced "a close examination of the case".

According to the Weilheim hospital, the X-rays were found the previous Friday „handed over to a disposal company, so that they destroy the images professionally.“ The X-ray documents were without exception a material for which there was no longer a duty to keep storage, according to the hospital's announcement. Accordingly, the images are at least ten years as, as this is the minimum retention period for X-ray images. Why the recordings were not properly disposed of and instead landed on the roadside, remains open so far. The clinic will make criminal charges, according to the message of the management.

60 kilograms of x-rays on the roadside
The disposal of old x-ray documents takes place once a year in the Weilheim Clinic. The commissioned disposal company picks up the documents in the clinic and is then obliged to destroy them according to the applicable regulations, according to the notification of the hospital. The order for collection and disposal of 90 so-called „film bags“ (each between ten and 15 kilograms) by the disposal company on Friday was obviously implemented but insufficient. A 68-year-old entrepreneur found four bags of around 60 kilograms of X-rays on the roadside in Neuperlach. The pictures were taken by the police. „In the film bags were x-rays, some of which contain silver or silver compounds“, reports the clinic Weilheim on. In addition, personal data of the patients were also visible on the pictures.

Consequences of X-ray imaging?
Obviously, the material to be disposed of had not arrived at the appointed office, according to the hospital's announcement. The Deputy Managing Director of Krankenhaus GmbH Weilheim-Schongau district, Florian Diebel, emphasized that the clinic is still in close contact with the police in order to clarify the incident. Internally, in the meantime, the involved employees, who coordinate such waste disposal orders at regular intervals, were interviewed and criminal charges would be made, explained the managing director in a press release (http://www.kh-gmbh-ws.de/index.php/17-klinik -women / 535-consequences-from-the-roentgen-images) to the consequences of the X-ray image find. (Fp)

Image: Dieter Schütz