Lisa Schick reports:
After several privacy breaches Saskatchewan’s Information and Privacy Commissioner is telling the Regina Qu’Appelle Regional Health Authority it needs to do something to stop its employees from snooping.
The recommendations stem from three incidents that happened in the RQHR over the past five years.
Read more about the breaches on NewsTalk 650. You can read the full investigation report here (pdf), and it’s well worth reading, as it severely criticizes the health authority for its inadequate safeguards and its failure to provide a timeline/deadline for addressing certain deficiencies.
Interestingly, the report explains that when entities self-report breaches, the Commissioner generally does not initiate a formal investigation because the entity comes up with a plan to prevent a recurrence. In this case, however, the health authority came up with a plan after the first (2009) breach but did not implement all of its own recommendations, resulting in two other privacy breaches that were similar in nature over the next two years. Under those circumstances, Commissioner Dickson opened a formal investigation – and wasn’t happy with the authority’s responses.
Importantly, from my perspective, in each of these privacy breaches, employees snooped and/or actually manipulated or altered patient records. Even if the information was not further disclosed to others, the breaches are problematic. The formal report includes a statement that should be plastered all over every wall in every health care facility:
This investigation also underscores the dangerous misconception that a breach of someone’s privacy is somehow less serious if the wrongdoer is not motivated by malice or financial gain. In my experience, it is cold and empty comfort to the violated patient whose information has been collected, used or disclosed unlawfully to be advised that the perpetrator was not an identity thief. It is critically important that all persons involved in our health care system recognize that motive is largely irrelevant when some patient’s privacy is violated. This attitudinal change requires a clear understanding that privacy is about each of us having a significant measure of control about the information that relates to us. Given the prejudicial nature of personal health information, there may be no arena where privacy is more important than that involving diagnosis, treatment and care of patients. There are already a percentage of patients who refuse to disclose certain health history to their primary care providers. As Saskatchewan constructs an ambitious and expensive EHR system, it will be important for trustees to demonstrate that patients can be confident that their privacy will not be at risk with the move to electronic records which may be accessible by many more individuals than was ever the case with paper records.
Now go read the full investigative report, but I warn you: it’s long.