CBR put medical data of dozens of clients in wrong files

The Central Bureau for Driving Licenses has added medical data from dozens of people who want to renew their driving license to digital files of the wrong people. In any case, this concerns 71 cases of medical data from clients.

The CBR confirms to the AD that this may have gone wrong more often. It concerns people who want to renew their driving license, whereby investigations by specialists, forms from general practitioners, address details and social security numbers have ended up in the wrong files. The change of persons took place between January and June. This came to the fore through random sampling, clients ringing the bell and CBR employees handling the medical records. In 50 cases the CBR found out themselves, but in 21 cases it was people who reported seeing medical data of others in their files.

It probably went wrong in those cases where the medical records are still being processed by filling in paper forms, which are then sent and scanned. This still happens in a quarter of the medical records; the rest is done through a digital procedure. No mistakes would have been made. The paper forms appear to be copied by doctors so that they can also be used for others, with the result that the identification number on the form no longer corresponds to a single patient. In addition, the scanning software that has to recognize social security numbers and dates of birth would be error-prone.

This issue mostly concerns people with medical disabilities and the elderly whose driving licenses need to be renewed. These groups usually cannot go to the town hall for an extension, but must, for example, complete a health declaration and be examined by a doctor. The latter is the case, for example, for people who are older than 75 and want to renew their driving licence. The CBR wants to use this to assess whether this group can continue to drive safely. There are about 7,000 people who have an expired driver’s license.

The NOS recently reported on ever-increasing waiting times for older people who want to renew their driving license. Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen wants to compensate people who would otherwise be without a valid driver’s license for too long by granting permission to continue driving with an expired driver’s license, but that does not apply to people with an illness or disability. In 2018, 650,000 health declarations were submitted to the CBR; that’s an eight percent increase. There are too few doctors to assess all those applications within the allotted time of four months.