If your personal information has been compromised, whether it was accessed, disclosed, leaked or destroyed without your consent, then it sounds like you’ve suffered a data breach.
Was a private healthcare organisation to blame for your data breach? Whether they unintentionally or deliberately broke data protection regulations, you could pursue compensation for any suffering that you were caused as a result of their failings.
In this article, we’ll examine what a private healthcare medical data breach is and what steps you could take after falling victim to one yourself. To help you understand your rights in this situation, we’ll address some common questions that data breach victims have, such as:
- What happens if a company has a data breach?
- Can a company be held responsible for a data breach?
- How can I claim data breach compensation for the damage I’ve been caused?
So, whether you’d like to learn how to establish liability against a private healthcare organisation responsible for your data breach or you’re interested in how much you could recover in a claim, please continue reading this guide to find out more.
On the other hand, why not get in touch with our team at Legal Expert today? Our advisors can offer you a consultation, free of charge, and provide you with specialist advice tailored to your unique situation. If they believe that you could have a valid claim, they can connect you with our solicitors to handle your case on a No Win No Fee basis.
If you’d like to see how we could help you win the compensation that you deserve, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team today about your data breach:
- Call 0800 073 8804
- Fill out a contact form
- Chat to us using the pop-up on your screen
Select A Section
- What Is A Medical Data Breach By A Healthcare Company?
- How The Healthcare Sector Should Comply With The GDPR
- How Medical Data Security Could Be Breached By A Healthcare Company
- ICO Fines Against The Healthcare Sector
- Reporting A Healthcare Data Breach To The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
- Calculating How Much You Could Claim For A Private Healthcare Data Breach
- No Win No Fee Private Healthcare Medical Data Breach Claims
- Speak To Us
- Extra Resources
What Is A Medical Data Breach By A Healthcare Company?
To help you understand your rights in the case of a private healthcare medical data breach, we’ll begin by making sure you’re familiar with some key definitions that we’ll refer to over the course of this article. These include explaining what the term data describes and what’s involved in a data breach.
The term data refers to any of your personal information that could be used to either directly or indirectly identify you. These can include personal details like your name and date of birth, and contact details like your home address, phone number and email address. In the context of a private healthcare medical data breach, there’s a good chance that this could also include your medical records.
A data breach is a security incident in which your personal information is either accessed, leaked or destroyed without your consent. If you entrusted your data to a private healthcare organisation and their failings were responsible for your breach, then you could pursue a compensation claim against them for the damage they’ve caused.
If you find yourself in this situation, please continue reading this article to see how you could take steps to help secure the compensation that you deserve. Alternatively, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team today about your data breach to receive a free consultation and see how our solicitors at Legal Expert could help you.
How The Healthcare Sector Should Comply With The GDPR
In the UK, organisations – including private healthcare providers – are legally required to follow data protection legislation to ensure that that data is processed fairly and securely according to the subject’s consent. If an organisation is found to have breached these laws, they face being penalised.
The Data Protection Act 2018 enacted the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into UK law. It created a framework for standards of data privacy and protection practices, outlining how organisations are and aren’t permitted to interact with subjects’ data. Some of the rules established include:
- Data must only be collected and used for permissions clearly stated and consented to by the subject
- Data must be processed in a fair and lawful manner
- Data on record must be regularly updated
- Data must not be retained for longer than necessary
- Data must not be transferred to any country without their own data protection laws
If an organisation suffers a security incident known as a data breach, then any subjects whose personal information could be compromised must be alerted of this within 72 hours.
Have you fallen victim to a private healthcare medical data breach? Do you believe that the organisation’s failings were responsible for it? If so, please get in touch with our team at Legal Expert to see whether you could have grounds to make a claim and how we could help you win the compensation that you deserve.
Limitation Periods
Before you decide to pursue a claim for your private healthcare medical data breach, please ensure that you’re familiar with the following time limits that apply:
- For data breach claims, you typically have up to 6 years to commence legal proceedings
- For cases involving a breach of your human rights, you only have 1 year
If you don’t heed the limitation period relevant to your case and leave it too long, you risk losing the compensation that you deserve. To see whether you’re entitled to make your claim, please get in touch with one of our specialist advisors at Legal Expert today for a consultation.
How Medical Data Security Could Be Breached By A Healthcare Company
This section will explore some of the reasons that a private healthcare medical data breach may happen, ranging from cyberattacks orchestrated by hackers to human error.
As medical databases hold a plethora of personal information about patients, this makes them a lucrative target for hackers seeking to acquire access. Whether your personal information is sold on the dark web or used as part of an identity fraud crime, hackers typically seek financial gain from data breaches.
In some cases, it’s actually the failings of those with a duty of care to protect your data that cause a breach to occur. Whether they handle your data in an unlawful manner or demonstrate human error, they can deliberately or inadvertently place your personal details at risk of being compromised. For example:
- The administrative staff could leave documents containing your data in plain sight of people unauthorised to view them
- Letters or emails containing your sensitive details could be sent to the wrong recipient by mistake
- Storage systems could be poorly designed or used, making your personal information susceptible to a breach
If you find yourself in this situation and believe that your private healthcare provider’s failings were responsible for your data breach, please continue reading to see what steps you could take next or get in touch with our team for free advice, support and professional help.
ICO Fines Against The Healthcare Sector
In this section, we’ll present you with a real case study of a private healthcare medical data breach to demonstrate how you could fall victim to one yourself. We’ll also provide information on the steps you could take in the wake of such a data breach to help evidence your claim against the organisation responsible for your breach.
In 2015, Lister Hospital, a private healthcare provider offering fertility treatments, discovered that they’d suffered a data breach compromising the confidentiality of its IVF appointments. The way in which the organisation recorded, transferred, transcribed and stored information on its IVF appointments were found to be fundamentally flawed.
It was revealed that the hospital had a system of emailing unencrypted recordings of private consultations to a third-party subcontractor in India to be transcribed and sent back to them. However, the company in India stored these recordings and transcripts on a server that wasn’t secure in an unencrypted format, meaning they could be easily accessed without authorisation.
This placed Lister Hospital in breach of the Data Protection Act as they failed to ensure that their subcontractor was acting according to proper practices. As a result, the private healthcare provider was fined a £200,000 penalty for their non-compliance with data protection regulations by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). To discover more about the ICO and the powers that they have, please see the next section of this article.
Source: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2017/02/private-health-firm-fined-200-000-after-ivf-patients-confidential-conversations-revealed-online
Reporting A Healthcare Data Breach To The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
If you’ve fallen victim to a private healthcare medical data breach and you believe that your provider’s failings were responsible for it, this section will outline how you could raise your concerns about their non-compliance with data protection regulations.
As mentioned in the section above, you could report the organisation responsible for your data breach to the Independent Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 3 weeks of the incident. The ICO is an independent organisation that’s responsible for monitoring organisations’ data protection practices, punishing non-compliance with the law where they see fit to minimise data breaches.
If found liable, the ICO could issue the organisation with a fine. However, they do not issue compensation as they simply act in the interest of data protection standards. At best, their findings could support your claim against the organisation in question.
Calculating How Much You Could Claim For A Private Healthcare Data Breach
Compensation in a successful private healthcare medical data breach can be awarded for two different types of damage. These are:
- Material damage refers to financial harm caused by the personal data breach. We’ll look at this in more detail below.
- Non-material damage means the psychological impacts of having your personal information exposed.
Following the ruling in Vidal-Hall & Others v Google Inc (2015), data subjects can claim for psychological distress whether they suffered financial harm or not. We have included the psychological harm brackets from the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG) in the table below.
Compensation Table
The values given in the JCG are guidelines only. Please be advised that the first entry is not a JCG figure.
| Suffering | Severity | Compensation Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| Very Severe Mental Damage and Material Damage | Very Severe | Up to £250,000 or over |
Psychiatric Damage | Severe | £66,920 to £141,240 |
| Moderately Severe | £23,270 to £66,920 | |
| Moderate | £7,150 to £23,270 | |
| Less severe | £1,880 to £7,150 | |
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Severe | £73,050 to £122,850 |
| Moderately Severe | £28,250 to £73,050 | |
| Moderate | £9,980 to £28,250 | |
| Less Severe | £4,820 to £9,980 |
Material Damage
As part of your private healthcare data breach compensation, you can also seek reimbursement for material damage. We have given a few examples of such financial harm you could be compensated for in the event a successful claim here:
- Loss of earnings.
- Relocation expenses.
- Security costs.
- Medical bills.
Make sure you retain supporting documents as proof of any financial harm you experience.
For a free assessment of your eligibility to claim, contact our advisory team today using the number given below.
No Win No Fee Private Healthcare Medical Data Breach Claims
If you’re concerned about the financial risk involved in making a data breach claim, our solicitors work under No Win No Fee agreements to help ease any anxieties that could deter you from pursuing compensation.
Some common benefits of this type of agreement that prove so popular amongst claimants include:
- There are no fees to pay your solicitor should they fail to recover compensation
- There are no upfront or ongoing costs while the case progresses
In the case that your solicitor wins your compensation for you, they’ll take a small percentage of your payout known as a ‘success fee’ to cover their legal costs. However, there isn’t a catch for you to worry about as this fee is legally capped to ensure that you still receive the compensation that you deserve.
Speak To Us
If you’re thinking about making a claim for a private healthcare medical data breach, why not get in touch with our team at Legal Expert today?
Our specialist advisors can offer you a consultation, free of charge, and provide you with honest advice tailored to your unique situation. If they believe that you could have a valid claim, they can connect you with our solicitors to handle your case on a No Win No Fee basis. Not only could they improve your claim’s chance of success, but help ensure that you win the compensation that you deserve.
- Call 0800 073 8804
- Fill out a contact form
- Email info@legalexpert.co.uk
- Chat to us using the pop-up on your screen
Extra Resources
To end our guide to making a claim for a private healthcare medical data breach, we’d like to thank you for reading and hope you found our advice useful. We hope that you now have a better understanding of what steps you could take to successfully secure the compensation that you deserve.
Whether you’ve found our guide useful and you’d like to see how our solicitors could help your case or you’d like more information about anything you’ve read today, please get in touch with us at Legal Expert.
Here are some additional resources to further your knowledge on this topic:
- Private Hospital Claims Guide – a more detailed guide to claiming against a private hospital.
- Claim Limitation Periods – everything you need to know about limitation periods on claims.
- No Win No Fee services – more information about why a No Win No Fee agreement could help you.
- Medical Records Data Breach By A Hospital Claims Explained
To access to the UK’s and the EU’s data protection laws, please see the links below for the legislation in full:
Guide by Mavers
Edited by Billing
