Health Minister Brad Hazzard has apologised after more than 1000 confidential medical records were found strewn on the floor of a derelict building which was previously part of the Garrawarra Centre at Waterfall.
Heath Minister Brad Hazzard promised a full investigation.
“To those people whose medical records were put in such storage arrangements in the early 2000s, I express my sincere apologies and can assure them and their families I will get NSW Health to do whatever I can to rectify the situation,” he said.
Medical executive director of the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District James Mackie said “a small percentage” of the documents were patient records.
Other documents involved financial matters related to capital works, he said at a media conference on Friday.
Mr Mackie “unreservedly apologised” to any patient and their family who may have been affected.
The aged care facility accommodates up to 120 dementia patients and the records, from 1992 to 2002, were in a building on the facility’s former, adjoining site .
The ABC, which revealed the privacy breach, said the documents contained “deeply intimate information of more than 400 vulnerable patients' personal profiles, medical conditions, behaviours, accidents, treatments, and medical history”.
“Among the documents are pain and incontinence charts, confidential social worker reports, doctor's referrals, hospital admission forms, a personal photo album, and an internal memo regarding a complaint from a daughter who was not notified when her father died.”
NSW Health said the site had been illegally trespassed, but ABC sources it was not secured and had been accessed repeatedly by members of the public.
State Opposition spokesman on health Walt Secord said “the haphazard disposal of the medical records is an absolute breach of trust”.
Mr Secord called for an independent, external investigation, with the emphasis to be not on apportioning blame but ensuring this did not happen again.
“NSW Health must guarantee that all family members associated with one of the biggest medical records’ breaches will be contacted and officially notified of the event,” he said.
“Medical records are incredibly sensitive,” he said.
“In many cases, you don't even share them with your closest family members.”
The story of how Triple J’s Hack program obtained thee documents starts on a winter’s weekend.
Sutherland woman Emma Lenz had heard about the abandoned Garrawarra cemetery and hospital in South Sydney before she stumbled across the derelict building complex on a bushwalk.
"It looks like the hotel in The Shining," Ms Jenz told Hack.
Inside she and her bushwalking partner would discover the first clues of an extraordinary NSW Government failing.
In one section of the unlocked and vandalised building, Emma found thousands of documents strewn among stubbed out cigarettes, drug paraphernalia, the carcass of a dead bird, empty spray cans and upturned furniture.
"The entire room was covered with paperwork… and [I] realised that it's all kind of quite recent health records,” Ms Jenz told Hack.
"I was thinking I must be overestimating the importance of the information...obviously if they've left it here, it's nothing.
"But it wasn’t until I came across this 'Register of Drugs of Addiction' with people's names...I kind of thought, 'Well if that was me, I'd be seriously worried about my information just left in an abandoned building like that'."