Privacy breach as Glenvale woman finds 19 pages of personal medical records lying around

Dozens of patients allegedly connected to two Toowoomba hospitals have had their personal information breached after a Glenvale resident found sheets of private clinical reports blown across her driveway.

Sheets of private medical documents connected to two Toowoomba Hospitals were found by a Glenvale resident after they blew into her garden.

Highly-sensitive medical information of dozens of Toowoomba patients has leaked after a resident found 19 pages of hospital documents strewn across her driveway.

Toowoomba’s St Andrew’s Hospital has launched an investigation into how the sensitive documents - which include patient names, ages, and sensitive medical details such as mental health conditions, bowel obstructions, UTIs, and cancer diagnoses - were found scattered across a suburban street in Glenvale on Wednesday morning.

Sheets of private medical documents connected to two Toowoomba Hospitals were found by a Glenvale resident after they blew into her garden.

Several of the sheets were stamped with a St Vincent’s Health Australia logo and St Vincent’s told the Glenvale woman who found them they believe these were part of patient transfers to St Andrew’s.

St Andrew’s Hospital said they met with the woman after the incident was brought to their attention.

“We sincerely thank her for securing the documents and alerting us,” a spokesperson at the hospital said.

“We are investigating whether any of the material relates to our hospital and to what extent.

“It is clear that some of the documentation is branded from another private hospital, and we will co-ordinate an appropriate response as part of our ongoing investigation.

“We’re absolutely committed to being transparent with our patients. We will be contacting impacted patients directly.”

Sheets of private medical documents connected to two Toowoomba hospitals were found by a Glenvale resident after blowing into her garden.

The Glenvale woman said she would have been mortified if her name and medical information had ended up at someone else’s doorstep.

“There’s private things here that I wouldn’t want to disclose to anyone, let alone like this. Things in here about STD treatments and private things,” she said.

“So many personal things here that would make me very upset to have someone else knowing without my permission.

“They have the right to keep that private, but not anymore because it’s printed out here for anyone to find. All of their information – sheets and sheets of it.

“It’s not the kind of thing you just go around making common knowledge.”

The woman said 14 of the sheets were double-sided clinical handover reports each with about four to six different patient details on each side, meaning there could be upwards of 100 patients impacted.

The remaining sheets appear to be patient progress reports without patient identification.

The Glenvale woman has since heard of two neighbours who have found more documents.

She said it seemed as though the documents had been blown out of the rubbish bins on her street, and there could be more flying around.

“There definitely could be others,” she said.

“Some of them had blown into the bushland at the end of our street.

“Why are these not being shredded?”

Health staff are under strict confidentiality and privacy practices, according to Queensland Health. It is an offence for staff to give information about you to anyone except under limited circumstances.

Sheets of private medical documents connected to two Toowoomba hospitals were found by a Glenvale resident after blowing into her garden.

The majority of the documents were dated in June 2025 and the Glenvale woman said she was even more stunned by how recent they were.

“This wasn’t some old document, these were last month’s documents,” she said.

“Some of those people could have still been in hospital with these conditions.”

The St Andrew’s spokesperson said they have strict protocols around handling physical documents and paperwork that is no longer needed is disposed of securely using locked confidential waste bins which are regularly collected and destroyed.

“Staff are not permitted to take any paperwork off site unless it’s for very specific and approved clinical reasons and even then there are safeguards in place,” they said.

“Taking documents out without permission would be a serious breach of our policies.”

Sheets of private medical documents connected to two Toowoomba hospitals were found by a Glenvale resident after blowing into her garden.

A spokesperson at St Vincent’s Private Hospital Toowoomba said they were contacted by a member of the public.

“A senior St Vincent’s staff member offered to retrieve the information from the member of the public but the documents had already been collected by an employee from another Toowoomba private hospital whose records were also part of the discovery,” the spokesperson said.

“St Vincent’s has since reviewed a copy of the documents with its letterhead.

“The information contained in it doesn’t in any way identify any patient.”

St Vincent’s said they are continuing to investigate the circumstances which led to the discovery of the documents.

Originally published as Privacy breach as Glenvale woman finds 19 pages of personal medical records lying around