NHS to immediately suspend staff over suspected record snooping

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By Sarah Lowden

Staff suspected of accessing medical records without a legitimate reason will be immediately suspended under a zero-tolerance crackdown on “snooping”, NHS England has said.

Every trust has been asked to “act immediately” by pausing a suspected member of staff’s access to NHS systems and suspending them while an investigation is carried out.

The decision has been taken after a recent series of cases involving staff accessing highly sensitive patient information they had no legitimate reason to view.

In May, it emerged that dozens of staff at University Hospitals of Liverpool Group had looked at the records of victims of the 2024 Southport attack which left three girls dead and 10 others injured.

The records of a three-year-old boy hurt after falling into a crocodile pit in Cambridgeshire in June were also viewed by around 40 hospital staff.

And this week, a number of staff at Bristol Foundation NHS Trust were put under investigation for potentially inappropriately accessing the medical records of teenager Oliver McGowan after his death.