“We have no evidence of any sort to suggest that any of those documents have not been retrieved and we are very confident there has been a full recovery of all the information involved.”

Dr Rosengren said there had been a "comprehensive" sweep of the area to ensure all the documents were retrieved, which included a "collaboration" with a number of local businesses.

He refused to specify whether the patient information was from the obstetrics and gynaecology department, but said it had come from “outpatient clinics”.

“The information varied - some of it has patient names on it, some information relates to clinical appointments, and some of it involves referral letters,” he said.

“But I want to stress that under no circumstances have any full medical records been involved in this process.”

Queensland Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington said she was outraged on behalf of the female patients potentially affected and accused the state government of sitting on the incident.

“The fact that Labor have tried to cover this up for almost a week and didn’t come clean about losing these sensitive medical records is simply not good enough," Ms Frecklington said in a statement.

“Patients should have been contacted as a first priority but instead all Labor have done is try to cover up this major fail."

The state government does not have direct jurisdiction over the day-to-day running of RBWH, which is operated by Metro North, one of the state's 16 hospital and health services that were set up under the previous LNP government.

Dr Rosengren confirmed the hospital had only on Wednesday started to personally contacted patients affected by the incident, nearly a week after it happened.

However, he denied suggestions the incident was made public on Wednesday because journalists had made inquiries about it.

“The hospital, working proactively with the privacy commissioner’s advice, made a statement today information everyone,” he said.

“It’s very important we have the appropriate information we can assure the public about before we generate unnecessary concern.”

Anyone who attended the RBWH as an outpatient over the last month who is concerned about their personal information can call (07) 3646 8216 or email RBWH-PLS@health.qld.gov.au

Queensland Health routinely destroys documents it is not required to archive, outlined in the policy on its website.