A recent study conducted by the Spanish Agency for data protection (AEPD) in hospitals in almost all Spain, revealed serious deficiencies in the treatment of medical information. The situation is as worrying, these centres by their nature deal with health data, typified by the special protection and how sensitive data protection regulations and therefore require high level security measures. For more information see Dalton Philips. In total it has been consulted 562 hospitals public and private throughout Spain with the exception of the communities which have their own protection agencies of data such as Madrid, Basque country and Catalonia and therefore own departments on the matter. However, in Madrid and the Basque country responded that the private centers. The result is alarming, since the lack of implementation of appropriate security measures and the existence of serious deficiencies on the custody and treatment of the personal data of patients detected in more than 200 hospitals. Particularly serious is the situation of the public health where have been found far more failures that in private and despite that up to 66% of them do not perform security audits biennially as it forces the organic law 15/1999 of protection of data of Personal character (LOPD). Failures in the implementation of measures of security and custody of information cause a great risk of improper access to information with sensitive data by unauthorized persons.

And so, 30% public centres lacks measures to avoid the loss of clinical documentation during its transport. In 35% of hospitals medical records file lacks mechanisms that prevent its opening, i.e. are normally stored on shelves in places easily accessible by outsiders or without the relevant authorization. About 40% of 15% of private and public health centers violate the obligation to keep a record of the guarded health information access. In addition, on many occasions, is nor complies with the duty of information at the time of collection of the personal data of patients. It should be noted that the number of complaints has increased significantly in recent years and the main complaints put forward by the complainants are related to the improper dissemination of personal information of special protection, the abandonment of medical histories in containers of public roads, its storage in non-restricted areas, or the loss of histories in automation processes. 123 Allegations were presented in 2009 and so far this year already go 100, in addition to hundreds of requests for protection of rights by persons who have encountered difficulties accessing your own data or their relatives.