‘Colossal stuff-up’: AHPRA mass email exposes private doctor information
- AHPRA has apologised after accidentally exposing the email addresses of thousands of doctors when a mass email was sent with recipients visible to each other.
- The privacy breach affected doctors across Australia, with concerns that the exposed contact details could be misused for unsolicited messages or other purposes.
- AHPRA says it is investigating how the error occurred and reviewing its processes to prevent similar privacy breaches from happening again.
The national healthcare watchdog has inadvertently identified more than 100 doctors, nurses and other practitioners who were offered addiction and alcohol misuse training in a mass email that has triggered fierce backlash and privacy complaints.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) sent an email on July 29 titled “Upcoming webinar on Addiction and recovery: process, support and experiencing a health notification” that failed to hide the identities of all recipients.
Doctors, nurses, radiologists and other health workers were invited by AHPRA to attend online sessions about being under investigation for health and addiction problems, adding “we appreciate that involvement in our regulatory process can be challenging for practitioners”.
“The webinar is open to everyone, but the material and discussion in this session will focus on the experience of practitioners who have a health-related notification or restrictions related to alcohol or substance misuse,” the email, obtained by the ABC, stated.
A spokesperson said AHPRA “took immediate steps to respond to the privacy breach as soon as it was detected” including “alerting those affected, requesting deletion of the email, apologising to them directly and providing information on how to raise a formal complaint”.
“These steps were …
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Original article and photo by "ABC News"
