Leak leads to talk of keeping Forth Valley health records safe

A leak in an area containing health records for Forth Valley patients was quickly contained – but it sparked a debate over how to make sure vital paperwork is kept safe in future.

NHS Forth Valley’s board heard the risk to Estates and Supporting Infrastructure had increased because health records will have to be found “more appropriate accommodation”.

Chairman Alex Linkston said the board should look at digitising all of the records.

He said: “If that would be acceptable, we should look at whether we can move to that completely.

“We need to make sure that all our efforts are going into one system and not trying to maintain two systems and not doing it well.”

The board was also told that there had been two separate, localised power outages in the past month, which had led to issues including X-ray machines going down for a short period of time.

Chief executive Cathie Cowan said that the patient critical system had done it’s job and maintained power supply.

She told board members that no patients had been affected and the response showed that back-up systems were working well.

She said: “There are always lessons to be learned but I was impressed with the response from members of staff.”

Board members were told it was thought that a fault in a piece of equipment had led to the problems although they were still working to confirm this.