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The West Coast District Health Board has launched a full investigation after confidential patient information concerning 300 patients from Grey Base Hospital was found in a Christchurch suburb.

Some of the documents remain missing, raising fears that they may have been destroyed.

Responding to a query from the Greymouth Star, the board yesterday admitted the ''potential'' privacy breach, which it said related to a ''serious employment issue''.

Canterbury and West Coast DHB chief executive David Meates confirmed the board had been managing a potential privacy breach regarding information about some West Coast patients.

On February 11 the DHB was approached by a member of the public who had found some pages containing patient information in Hornby, Christchurch.

It soon became clear that the information was about West Coast DHB patients.

''We have looked into this matter and it is connected with a serious employment issue that we are currently investigating,'' Mr Meates said.

''The office of the Privacy Commissioner has been advised of this potential privacy breach and we have let them know that we are contacting everyone whose information was misplaced.''

Hospital staff last week held urgent meetings with 15 people, whose private health information was included in the documents ''misplaced'' by a staff member.

The board also wrote to 300 people whose names and National Health Index (NHI) numbers were included in the documents.

''It's now more than two weeks since we were alerted to some of the documents being found in Hornby,'' Mr
Meates said.

''We are treating this as a potential privacy breach as we don't know whether anyone has seen their clinical information, and unfortunately we don't know where the missing documents are,'' Mr Meates said.

• In total, 40 pages of information were ''misplaced'' by a staff member.
• 28 of the 40 pages contained some private information.
• Six pages containing private information were retrieved.
• 22 pages containing some clinical information which is currently of ''unknown whereabouts''.