Current and prospective employees of Ambulance Victoria (AV) have had their personal information exposed to other AV staff following an error on the organisation’s intranet.
Commenting on the privacy breach, AV said the documents contained the alcohol and other drug testing results of approximately 600 job applicants undertaken between May 2017 and October 2018.
“The documents included first name, last name, date of test, results (negative or non-negative, which meant further testing was required) and, where applicable, the class of drug detected and whether AV standards were met or further lab results required,” AV said.
“AV is committed to protecting the privacy of our people and our patients and we are extremely concerned that this personal and health information had been inadvertently accessible on the AV intranet,” it said.
“We recognise the distress this may cause all affected individuals and the public and we unreservedly apologise.”
AV said it had contacted all impacted employees to notify them of the breach and was in the process of contacting anyone who was not a current AV employee.
It said the documents had been accessed only a handful of times in the past six months and were not directly accessible to anyone outside the organisation “and there is no evidence of them being shared outside AV.”
“AV immediately removed access to these documents and commenced an investigation including an access audit,” Ambulance Victoria said.
“Our investigation continues but the documents appear to have been made accessible by error.
“If you believe you have been impacted, have any questions or would like wellbeing support as a result of this privacy breach, please contact [email protected] in the first instance,” AV said.
