THE chief executive of the Royal Bolton Hospital is to be grilled over the discovery of patients’ records in a bin outside a fast food restaurant.

Lesley Doherty will address Bolton Council’s Health Scrutiny and Overview Committee about the embarrassing find at its meeting next week.

As reported in The Bolton News, the records were found in a bin outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Derby Street, Bolton, in June.

It led to Bolton Council representatives tabling a list of questions about what went wrong in a bid to ensure it never happens again.

Now Mrs Doherty is set to present the findings of an NHS investigation to members of the scrutiny committee on Tuesday.

Cllr Andy Morgan, who is on the committee, said: “I am extremely curious to find out how things went so badly wrong and so are other members of the committee.”

The dumped patient records, all marked “confidential”, contained names, ages and the medical history of 19 patients and were found by a McDonald’s customer.

Hospital bosses apologised to patients and launched an immediate investigation.

The scrutiny committee’s vice-chairman, Cllr David Chadwick, said: “I have worked in a hospital and, if everything has been working correctly, there should be a record of who has had access to which records and when.

“I am sure the management were absolutely mortified when this happened and I have full confidence that Mrs Doherty will present a thorough report to us.

“We must find out what happened, hear what procedures have been changed and be reassured that the chance of it happening again has been massively reduced.”

● The committee was also due to be updated about why health chiefs paid a company £2 million to treat patients it will never see.

Care UK dealt with half the expected patients in 2009 and 2010, but NHS Bolton still had to pay the full amount.

But a delay in compiling information means it could now be January before the committee receives an update.