An investigation by the BBC has revealed that Health Assured, the UK’s largest provider of workplace mental health services, allowed its corporate clients to listen in on confidential helpline calls without informing or seeking the consent of the callers. Lawyers have deemed this practice to be “highly inappropriate” and “unethical” and suggest it could breach privacy and data protection laws. Health Assured, which provides a helpline and short-term counselling for 13 million workers across the UK and Ireland, has denied breaching any confidentiality or privacy rules and has said the practice of clients listening in was not company policy. It admitted that the practice had taken place and it said it had taken steps to ensure this would not recur.
Alongside claims that helpline calls from vulnerable callers were not always adequately handled, which we had already reported in March, these new allegations have been made by a range of sources, including 30 current and former Health Assured employees. Other claims include the use of confidentiality agreements to silence former employees who wish to raise issues surrounding unfair treatment or poor practices, along with the threat of legal action for posting negative online reviews. Of greater concern, perhaps, there are also claims that people who were not qualified counsellors were drafted in to handle initial helpline calls to help manage demand, although Health Assured has said this was not part of its official policy and would not have been their preferred course of action.
Listeners tuned into Health Assured’s helpline are typically employees dealing with personal problems such as bullying, bereavement or depression. The Health Assured website highlights the importance of privacy and data protection principles, stating that these helplines are “necessarily confidential – privacy laws and ethics dictate this”. Critics, however, argue that the practice of live-listening to the calls breaches these regulations.
It has also emerged that Health Assured has recruited counsellors by allowing them to listen in to live helpline calls as part of an open recruitment day. Despite claims that the prospective counsellors were vetted and also subject to ethical standards and strict confidentiality agreements, critics are alarmed about the potential for compromised privacy surrounding these patient interactions.
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More