AN investigation has been launched after confidential hospital patient documents were discovered in a bin.

The information — which contained names, ages and medical history of patients at The Royal Bolton Hospital— was found in a bin outside McDonald’s in Derby Street, Bolton, on Monday, by a diner at the restaurant.

The document contained the details of 19 patients and was marked as confidential, with instructions to destroy the information at the end of the shift. Dee Sissons, director of patient safety and experience, and chief nurse, said last night: “We take patient confidentiality issues very seriously and are, therefore, extremely concerned to hear of this incident.

“We apologise to those patients concerned and we will be contacting them or their carers. We are holding an immediate investigation into how this has happened.”

The Bolton News has now handed the medical records back to the hospital.

The man who found them, who has asked not to be named, discovered them when he went to put rubbish in the bin.

He spotted them at the top of the bin and thought they looked “out of place”, so retrieved them.

He said: “I am very shocked to have found these documents.

“If there was anyone I knew on there, I would be very upset about it.

“I would think that information like this should be destroyed.

“I have now idea how it ended up in the bin.”

It is not the first time that confidential details have been found elsewhere.

In February, 2009, hospital chiefs wrote to 1,300 patients after documents were found in the street.

The Royal Bolton Hospital later sacked contractor Severnside, which was responsible for transporting the confidential waste for disposal by pulping.

NHS Bolton also lost information in September, 2009, when details including phone messages from patients and staff payslips, were thrown away with general rubbish instead of being disposed of as confidential information.

Paper files containing the names, addresses and phone numbers of a group of disabled people were lost on a train in November that year. Cllr Andy Morgan, opposition spokesman on Bolton Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee, said: “This is ridiculous. It is about the fourth time that documents have fallen off the back of a truck or have been found in a bin.

“Every time the hospital says it has tightened up procedure and then it happens again.

“It is crazy that information is being lost like this. They come up with lame excuses and nothing seems to be getting better.”

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “Patient confidentiality is of the utmost importance and it is outrageous that such detailed and intensely personal information about patients was left in a public bin.

“We hope that the hospital trust will take immediate steps to hold an internal inquiry to find out why this has been allowed happen, decide what disciplinary action needs to be taken and put measures in place to ensure that it never happens again.”

David Cartwright, vicechairman of Patients’ Council in Greater Manchester, said: “This is quite straightforward as far as we are concerned.

The people responsible for not destroying records, as given instruction, should be fired.

“It is gross misconduct.

They say sorry and put their hands up, but this keeps happening. They are certainly not learning the lesson.”

The hospital was unable to say who would have access to the information and what would normally happen to it at this stage.

That information would form part of the investigation.

It is not known how long the investigation will take to complete.