Woman in Scotland receives parcel containing confidential information about hundreds of patients in Milton Keynes

The parcel from Llloyds Pharmacy was delivered to the private address of the woman in Elgin, on south coast of the Moray Firth in Scotland.

It was marked 'Delivery of Data to NHS on behalf of Lloyds Pharmacy' and it contained hand-written records of prescriptions from doctors and dentists.

It is believed the package was destined for the NHS prescriptions services offices, which are nearly 400 miles away in Bolton, Greater Manchester.

The woman told the Manchester Evening News: "It's got my name, address and phone number on it.

"There was a carrier bag with a stack of hundreds of prescriptions from places like Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes. It's got patients' names, ages, home addresses, the practices they've been to and what they've been prescribed. They're handwritten. It's quite worrying."

Lloyds Pharmacy has launched an investigation into how such personal information went badly astray.

They say it was a courier error and steps have been taken to prevent a repeat.

A Lloyds Pharmacy spokesperson said: "After carrying out a thorough investigation, we can confirm that this incident was the result of a courier error. The prescriptions were secured by our Data Protection Officer within 24 hours and we're pleased to confirm that this was not a reportable data breach.

"We have spoken to the courier provider who have conducted an internal investigation and assured us that steps have been taken to prevent this from happening again."