The father of a girl seriously hurt in the Southport attack has accused North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) of a “complete breach of trust” as it emerged it was investigating whether staff inappropriately accessed victims’ medical records.
He described the possible breaches as “appalling” and alleged some ambulance staff “just wanted to satisfy their own morbid curiosity”.
It comes after it emerged in May that dozens of workers at Aintree Hospital, where some of the injured were treated, had looked at the records with no good reason.
NWAS chief executive Salman Desai said it was investigating after it had “identified concerns about potential inappropriate access to patient records”.
Three young girls – Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King, and Elsie Dot Stancombe – were murdered in the attack, while 10 others were physically injured.
The father of a girl who was 13 when she was injured but survived the attack said: “It is a complete breach of trust in our darkest hours as a family and dampens how you feel about the amazing work they do to save lives.
“It was already incredibly difficult to think that staff at Aintree hospital had needlessly pried into our daughter’s condition.”
The man, who cannot be identified due to an anonymity order protecting his daughter, had been helping to supervise the dance class before she was stabbed in the back and arm.
Solicitors acting for the girl and for another 21 of the 23 girls who survived the attack are calling for a full-scale review by NHS England into the guidance and disciplinary procedures for staff who inappropriately access patient data.
The calls come after another trust, NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group (UHLG), admitted in May that nearly 50 staff members at Aintree Hospital had looked inappropriately at the medical records of some of the injured victims in the days after the attack.
Fletchers Solicitors, which is already investigating this breach, said the family were reviewing documents given to them by UHLG about the breaches at Aintree, when they saw information that said staff from North West Ambulance Service might have also accessed their daughter’s records without cause.