No Confidence in NHS NHFT CATSS Confidential patient helpline - major breach of privacy!!!!!

This blog entry relates to NHFT CATSS helpline breaching my patient confidentiality and their flagrant disregard for privacy.

I am an abuse victim featured in BBC articles in 2015:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-30840231
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-30817150

I was seeing a private psyciatrist Dr Andrew Iles (Oxford Priory Wellbeing Centre/Albion Clinic Northampton) about the effects of
years of sexual abuse from imprisoned paedophile and in the first session Iles made a crude inappropriate joke about my wedding night and married sex life, which he has admitted to in writing.

Feeling shocked by this I rang Northamptonshire NHS CATSS confidential
telephone support service for mental health patients and they logged the call on 27th June 2019 that I was in tears due to my private
psychiatrist’s joke and felt I couldn’t trust him. My husband then
informed Iles by email he had got home and found me in tears on the phone to CATSS because of him.

So, on 28th June 2019 Iles himself rang the NHS
confidential patient helpline to talk to them about me, when the CATSS helpline is for PATIENTS in distress, not for consultants. Even a freedom of information request (FOI0518047) containing the definition of the duty and responsibility of the CATSS team states it simply 'provides a telephone support service for service users in distress or in need of additional support'. There is no mention of medical professionals in there. To my horror, without even verifying
properly who he was, the confidential helpline handler, Maria Kattish,
actually spoke to Iles for 5 minutes and told him I'd called, as if
the word ‘confidential’ meant nothing to them! All this occurred
behind my back, I did not find out until I later saw my medical records
and was totally shocked! They shouldn’t even have told him I was a user
of their service let alone what I’d said about him!

The manager of CATSS, Marshall Mataye, then told me, and wrote on my medical record, ''I reassured Lina that CATSS did not disclose any information about her contact or care to Dr Isle at any point'' (as that is not what the line is for and that as I understand private doctors would have to apply for information in writing). Angela Hillery, Chief Executive NHFT, confirmed this twice in letters. However, upon seeing my full medical record and contacting them again, their legal representative had to admit that the helpline actually did give him confidential data and that Kattish told him of my call about him when I was in tears the night before. Clearly Hillery and Mataye had lied in their response – twice. Their solicitors seem to justify this giving of data under ‘public task’ but there was no urgency when he called and I feel it was a terrible betrayal of my confidence in a confidential NHS patient helpline simply to entertain someone fishing for information about himself. The NHS confidentiality document on the government website says there should be no surprises in data handling – anybody would be surprised at this!

They also took a bunch of lies off him and slapped them as fact on my
medical record from his call. For example, he told UCAT my emails were mostly abusive yet the GMC have stated in writing none of those emails were abusive whatsoever. He also told CATSS I'd seen him in May when my first appointment was not until June 2019 and that I'd made excessive phonecalls to him when I had never rang Dr Iles! CATSS said they would do this (take random data) from anyone who called them even members of the public which also shocked me as any of my abusers could ring with defamatory data about me which would simply be added to my medical record as fact!

Clearly users of CATSS NHS helpline would be horrified to know that the
line is anything but confidential and that vulnerable people cannot trust them.

Iles is now subject to a full misconduct investigation by the GMC on 8
counts of misconduct in his treatment of me, including making
inappropriate jokes and personal comments and failing to maintain patient confidentiality. All Angela Hillery could say was that they believed Iles was acting in my best interests – just to rub salt into the wound, as they also aided him in discharging me behind my back and to nobody’s care, simply due privacy complaints, all contrary to GMC regulations!

I have totally lost confidence in them and will not be calling them again, however, they say even if I don’t use the service they’ll still talk to and take information off any member of the public who rings about me at any given time!

I feel the NHS CATSS helpline should be made to see that patients who trust them should not be betrayed to anyone who rings them up!

The ICO can now deal with the legality of it - my reason for blogging is to question the lack of ethics involved with CATSS and NHFT and Dr Iles!