John Cairns reports:
Letters are going out to 151 patients at Prairie North Health Region informing them of a privacy breach involving their personal information.
The employee involved in the breach was not involved in the patients’ medical care, but had improperly accessed the patients’ personal health information between 2009 and 2012, considered a breach under the Health Information Protection Act.
Prairie North was informed of the breach in November 2012 and after a lengthy and detailed investigation, the employee was terminated, according to Irene Denis, vice-president of people, strategies and performance at Prairie North Health Region.
Read more on The Battlefords News-Optimist.
It is not clear why patients are first being informed of the breach now “in the interest of openness and transparency.” Maybe there’s nothing that the patients can or need to do given the circumstances of the breach, which sounds like a “snooping” incident, but delayed “transparency” is not as confidence-inspiring as timely transparency.