Illness Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide

This article examines illness data breach compensation. Throughout this guide, we look at how your health data could be involved in a data breach. Additionally, we look at what makes a data breach eligible for a claim.

Firstly, we define what a data breach is while looking at examples of how illness data could be breached. We also investigate what legislation protects data security in addition to looking at what protections it offers.

Personal data as well as special category data may be included in a health data breach. We examine what personal data and special category data is using examples that could be included in a breach of medical information.

In addition, you may be eligible to claim for illness data breach compensation. Certain claiming criteria applies. We examine what evidence you could present to support your claim.

While reading this guide, you may have some questions about your potential medical data breach claim. Our advisors are here to help.

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What Is An Illness Data Breach Compensation Claim?
Types Of Illness Information
What Evidence Could Help Me Claim Compensation?
Examples Of Illness Data Breaches
Illness Data Breach Compensation Amounts UK
What Are The Benefits Of Claiming With A No Win No Fee Solicitor?

What Is An Illness Data Breach Compensation Claim?

In order to claim illness data breach compensation, you might like to know what a data breach is and what legislation governs data protection. Data protection legislation does not protect all data. It only seeks to keep personal data safe. This means that in order to have a valid claim personal data must be involved in the breach. Health data can be considered a type of personal data known as special category data, such information is given even more protection.

A personal data breach is a security incident involving your personal data. This means that your personal data could have been breached, such as through unauthorised access to your medical records, or destroyed or lost, such as through loss of your medical records. Additionally, your personal data could be altered during a data breach.

You might ask ‘what does the legislation say about UK data breach compensation’? Two key pieces of legislation govern data protection. These are the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).

This legislation:

Grants data subjects more rights over their personal data.
Holds data controllers responsible for compliance. The controller is typically an organisation that collects your personal data. They decide the purpose behind processing as well as how this data will be processed. A data processor may be appointed to act on their behalf.
Sets the specific claiming criteria that you must meet to file for a personal data breach compensation claim. We’ll cover this later in this article.

Contact our dedicated data breach advisors if your patient data was breached.

Statistics On Data Breaches In The Healthcare Sector

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is an independent authority on data security. Their role includes collecting information on reported data security incident trends in all sectors. The health sector, during the fourth financial quarter of 2021/22, reported the following data security incidents.

fourth quarter 2021/22 non-cyber incidents reported in health

Types Of Illness Information

If you would like to make a claim for illness data breach compensation, you might be interested to learn what personal information is protected. Personal data is information that could identify you as a subject. It includes your name and address, as well as other data such as your bank sort code and account number.

Personal data that is particularly sensitive is given additional protections. This includes your medical data, such as any medical conditions you suffer from.

Call us today for free advice from our data breach advisors.

What Evidence Could Help Me Claim Compensation?

To claim illness data breach compensation, you must prove that you meet the eligibility requirements as set out in Article 82 of the UK GDPR. These include:

Proving that the organisation failed to comply with data protection legislation.
The breach included your personal data.
You must also prove you suffered due to the data breach. This includes experiencing financial loss or an injury to your mental health, such as experiencing stress.

Evidence must be included to support your claim. You may find that a data breach solicitor could assist with acquiring supporting evidence.

Following a data breach, an organisation should alert you without undue delay. That’s if the data breach could infringe on your rights. They may inform you via email or letter. Either of these could prove that your personal data was included in a data breach.

If you have reason to believe a data breach occurred, such as receiving spam text messages, you could report your concerns to the organisation. If they do not respond or do so in an unsatisfactory manner, you could then report this to the ICO. Communications between yourself and the ICO if they confirm a data breach occurred could support a claim for illness data breach compensation.

Additionally, you will require evidence of your financial losses if you experienced any. This could include a credit check or bank statements.

As well as evidence of the breach itself and the financial impact, if you experienced a mental health injury, such as anxiety due to the data breach, you will also need to prove this. Your medical records could be submitted.

To discuss what evidence could be submitted to support a claim for illness data breach compensation, contact our team of data breach advisors.

Examples Of Illness Data Breaches

In 2012, the ICO fined the Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust £90,000 for a data breach. The personal data, including the diagnoses of 59 patients were faxed to a member of the public over the course of three months. The ICO found that the trust had insufficient checks in place.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18145350

Illness Data Breach Compensation Amounts UK

You may ask, ‘how much compensation will I get for a data breach’?

Recovering your financial losses incurred as a result of the data breach is called the ‘material damage’ head of your claim. Your medical illnesses are claimed for under the ‘non-material damage’ head of your claim.

You may not have experienced financial loss, or may not wish to claim under the material damage head of your claim. Due to the Vidal-Hall and Others v. Google Inc. (2015) case heard in the Court of Appeal you can claim for a mental health injury alone. Before this case was settled, you would have to claim for non-material damage at the same time as you claimed for material damage.

We have put together the table below providing figures for mental illness from the latest edition of the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG) released in spring 2022. The JCG is a document that provides legal professionals with a way to assign potential value to claims. In it is a listing of injuries sitting along with compensation brackets.

Edit
Mental Health Condition and Severity	Compensation Brackets	Details
Severe Level Mental Illness (a)	£54,830 to £115,730	Coping with daily life is difficult and the prognosis is very poor.
Moderately Severe Level Mental Illness (b)	£19,070 to £54,830	Problems occur coping with daily life, but the future is more optimistic than the more severe level mental illness.
Moderate Level Mental Illness (c)	£5,860 to £19,070	Problems have occured coping with daily life, but improvements occurred.
Less Severe Level Mental Illness (d)	£1,540 to £5,860	Daily life is impacted by a mental disability. This is short lasting.
Severe Level Stress Disorder (a)	£59,860 to £100,670	This is a permanent injury that affects all areas of life preventing a return to pre-trauma levels of function.
Moderately Severe Level Stress Disorder (b)	£23,150 to £59,860	A professional may help the claimant recover from some symptoms, but a significant disability is present and the symptoms will last into the foreseeable future.
Moderate Level Stress Disorder (c)	£8,180 to £23,150	Some symptoms last beyond a recovery, but they are not disabling.
Less Severe Level Stress Disorder (d)	£3,950 to £8,180	A virtual recovery occurs within two years.

Speak to our data breach claims team for an estimate of your non-material damage.

What Are The Benefits Of Claiming With A No Win No Fee Solicitor?

You may wish to hire the services of a data breach solicitor. You could hire a No Win No Fee lawyer using a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) for your data breach claim.

This means that you won’t pay for your solicitor’s services upfront. Their payment is taken from the awards of successful claims. This is called a success fee, and it is legally capped. If your claim does not succeed, you won’t have to pay for your solicitor’s services.

Our data breach advisors can answer any questions you may have about the breach of your health data. If you wish to proceed to make a claim for illness data breach compensation, you could be put in touch with a specialist data breach lawyer today.

Contact our team today:

Call 0800 073 8804
Start a claim online
Try the live chat feature

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