Minister of health Paulette Lenert sought to reassure MPs about the CHL’s "black list" of patients. (Photos: Romain Gamba and Matic Zorman/Maison Moderne/archives. Editing: Maison Moderne)

Minister of health Paulette Lenert sought to reassure MPs about the CHL’s "black list" of patients. (Photos: Romain Gamba and Matic Zorman/Maison Moderne/archives. Editing: Maison Moderne)

The minister of health has described the black list of patients at the CHL, unveiled by Paperjam, as a measure "to protect the staff" and not as a sanction as such. She added that the list was not being shared with other hospitals and that it was not possible that anyone has been placed on the list by mistake.

Fewer than 10 patients, out of the 175,000 recorded 2021, now have limited access to the services of the Centre hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL), Patients placed on the list have wither verbally abused or committed physical violence against doctors and nurses. The CHL prefers to refer to the list as "computerised monitoring of individuals".

After the publication of the Paperjam article, MP (Piratepartei) put a series of parliamentary questions to the minister of health. Before answering them, (LSAP), commented: "Allow us to explain the context of such an exceptional measure. It is a protective measure for hospital staff and not a sanction against the patient. It is used for physical assaults, serious verbal assaults and threats."

No mistakes possible

The CHL had told Paperjam that anyone placed on the list had been notified by mail, but that they had no right to access or modify their data. They "continue to have access to the health data collected about them by the CHL. Like all patients, they can ask the CHL's data protection officer (DPO) about the data processed about them," the ministry said in response to Sven Clément's concerns about the GDPR.

What can a person do if he or she ends up on the list by mistake because he or she has the same name as someone else? "The people concerned are identified, like any patient in the country, by their permanent patient identifier (PPI), not by their surname/first name/year [of birth]," replied Paulette Lenert.

"The measure is kept by the hospital in the patient's individual file as additional information and therefore cannot be confused." The MP also wondered whether this "blacklist" is shared between hospitals. No, according to the ministry of health, which points out that it is not a list as such that "would circulate in the CHL".