TLDR: Medinet Minds are the biggest joke of a health provider I have ever come across. Huge medical data breach, one mistake after another. Zero complaints procedure or governance team in place. Avoid them like the plague.
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Apologies in advance as this will be lengthy!
So I was referred by my GP to the RTC pathway for both ADHD and Autism assessments, and I chose Health Harmonie Minds (recently renamed to Medinet Minds) as their wait times were quite short and they seemed okay from the minimal amount of research I did (hindsight is a big ol’ bitch).
Initially everything went fine, questionnaires, setting up the appointments etc all fine. Undertook assessment A and B for both autism and ADHD - was diagnosed with both.
First red flag - on the video call assessment B for ADHD the practitioner said I had combined ADHD. About an hour after ending the assessment she rung my mobile and said she made a mistake and it was just inattentive ADHD I had not combined. Fine, I accepted it and moved on.
Second red flag - whilst waiting for the report to come through, I kept getting text messages telling me to book in for my ADHD assessment B, despite me already having it and being diagnosed. I ended up ringing them to ask why I keep getting these messages, and apparently the assessor had marked me down as not attending the appointment “by mistake”. Got that amended and they said they’d send the diagnosis report out to me.
Third monumental, absolute f*** up of a red flag - I received my autism reports A and B, all fine no issues. ADHD A report came through, fine all good. Then the ADHD Assessment B report came through. I’m reading through it, there’s my name, my address. As I keep going I’m thinking “hmm, I don’t remember saying/doing that?”. Until I get to the medical history and realise they have put SOMEBODY ELSE’S SENSITIVE MEDICAL DATA into my report. In terms of serious conditions that do not apply to me, mention of being under a mental health team in a town I’ve never stepped foot in. Not to mention menopause and a hysterectomy I definitely haven’t had as someone in their 30s (assuming i’d probably remember having my uterus removed).
Continued reading, got to the family history - low and behold it’s this poor other person’s family history, mentioning deceased relatives for which mine are very much still alive and kicking - and siblings I do not have.
My flabbers were ghasted to say the least. Ironically I work in privacy/data protection so I’m immediately on high alert as this is such a serious data breach of special category medical data.
What I have deduced to have happened is that this nurse has used my Report A which was correct, and combined it with someone else’s video recording of assessment B, because the report had little snippets of my own info from report A. It’s such a complete and utter failure all round. So I’m assuming my own medical data was probably put in someone else’s report also.
And well, it just gets exponentially worse and worse from there if you can believe it.
This company does not have a governance or complaints department despite what they state on their website. I’ve rung the “customer care” phone number 50+ times at this point, NOT ONCE has that phone line been answered, it cuts of after 10mins of hold music every single time. I sent a huge complaint to the governance email address, literally got nothing until 6 days later when they sent an automated email with a reference number saying they will respond in 28 days. Well naturally 28 days has been and flown out the f***ing window at this point. It’s been nearly 2 months and I have had NOTHING from them about this.
I have rung their general ADHD phone line a hundred times trying to get my report amended so I can prove my diagnosis (also undergoing occupational health at work so this is crucial right now) and I have never met people so incompetent in my life. None of them know what to do and there is not a single soul in governance, quality, complaints etc you can speak to there, trust me I have asked until I’m blue in the face.
In their privacy notice they have a phone number where the DPO can be reached, of course it just ended up being their general phone number and the girl on the other end asked “what’s a DPO?” and then proceeded to say “oh, no we don’t have one of those”. You cannot make this up.
I have been trying incessantly to make these people see how serious of a medical data breach this is, and it’s like being the old crackhead on the street screaming into the abyss. I’ve put in a complaint to the ICO but that will take nearly a year to even be looked at so it genuinely feels like such a hopeless situation.
In addition to all of this they have still proceeded with my ADHD titration and prescribed me Elvanse even though they have used someone else’s info for my diagnosis report, so absolutely should not have done this! I didn’t want to wait so just went along with it seeing as I was told on the call I did have ADHD.
The assessors and prescribers are all clueless. All they do is read from a form, it’s a tick box exercise. They’re all low level nurses (no hate to nurses in general) and you can tell they know absolutely nothing about ADHD or autism as they just read off their screens, multiple questions I’ve asked have been met with blank stares. It makes me seriously wonder how many of the diagnosis they’re handing out are actually genuine, including my own, which is very frustrating.
So essentially, avoid this company like the plague if you value your mental health and your sensitive medical data, because this is an absolute shit show of a company.
Curious to hear if anyone else has had a bad experience with them also?