A MOTHER has criticised a "worrying breach" of data after she was sent a stranger's medical records along with those of her daughter.

Ellen Graham was shocked to find the confidential records belonging to a pensioner had been put inside a sealed envelope alongside with three-year-old Ella's medical history.

After struggling for years with her little girl’s chronic kidney problems, Mrs Graham, of Thorntree Gardens, Middleton St George, paid £10 to Neasham Road Surgery in Darlington in exchange for a copy of her records.

Ella, a pupil in the village’s St George’s Church of England Academy, has suffered with a duplex kidney, which causes severe pain and frequent infections, and her mother hoped the medical information could be used to seek alternative treatment.

But the envelope, marked for collection by Mrs Graham, also included the confidential details of a stranger registered at the same practice.

Mrs Graham said: “On the papers I saw a nursing home and various drugs listed that I’d never heard of, but I only briefly flicked through the papers before I realised they were someone else’s details.

“I phoned the doctors’ and I told the practice manager that it’s an absolute disgrace."

Neasham Road Surgery’s practice manager, Sally Hutchinson, arranged to meet with Mrs Graham following the “mix-up”, but Mrs Graham said no efforts have been made to retrieve the pensioner's records.

Michelle Thompson, chief executive of medical watchdog, Healthwatch Darlington, added that the incident is uncommon and that the surgery would be taking the breach seriously.

She said: “From a Healthwatch point of view, this is worrying. It’s a data breach we can only assume that it’s probably down to human error.

“We would be asking for assurances and hoping that a staff training process is in place to avoid that sort of data breach happening again.

“I’m sure that they’ll be conducting a full practice inquiry and they will be taking that very seriously.

“It’s about information governance and finding out what happened, but thankfully we don’t hear about this sort of thing happening very often.”

The Northern Echo contacted Neasham Road Surgery, but the group declined to comment due to patient confidentiality.