GPs were mistakenly given access to colleagues’ pension accounts, a GP campaign group has told Pulse.
Three or four GPs found they could see other GPs’ pensions data when they logged in to the PCSE online portal, GP Survival (GPS) reported.
GPS chair Dr John Hughes told Pulse: “This is a very serious breach of confidentiality. I would say it further damages trust in the system, but I don’t think anybody has any trust in PCSE and the system at all at the moment.”
Another GP, Dr Neil Bhatia, also logged this issue.
He told Pulse: “One of my GPs noticed this. She logged in and was immediately able to access, had she chosen to, the records of every other GP in the surgery. There were screens and screens of GPs. This is very sensitive information – people’s earnings – all sorts of information. I rang PCSE and reported it. They said it’s just a one off – that she has just been given the wrong type of access. But I think this has happened elsewhere.”
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, chair of the NASGP, said: “PCSE seems unwittingly to be playing out a master class on how not to bring your customers on board with you. Its process for administering our pensions has always suffered from an element of obfuscation, and that has carried on into this latest rollout of its new pension portal, with many locums also struggling to process their forms by the required deadlines.
“There seems to be an almost complete lack of empathy for the fact that PCSE has been given responsibility for the livelihoods of thousands of public servants after we’ve all spent 50 years working for the NHS. Yet somehow we’re left feeling that we are nothing more than an Amazon parcel with the wrong postage.”
NASGP urges any members who encounter this error to report it to PCSE, and on NASGP’s exclusive members’-only forum.
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