As a follow-up to a situation previously described here, there was an editorial in today’s Regina Leader-Post:
It qualifies as a “medical error” of sorts.
No, we’re not talking about a bungled procedure, but the refusal of health-care workers to tell a Saskatoon woman her boyfriend was HIV positive.
Frantic with worry after an immunodeficiency clinic at a hospital left a phone message saying they were looking for her boyfriend, the woman repeatedly called the clinic over several days to ask if she’d been exposed to HIV. She couldn’t ask the boyfriend — he’d suddenly disappeared.
Health-care workers wouldn’t answer any of the woman’s questions, until one finally said “that’s enough
of this nonsense” and revealed the truth. The woman got tested and discovered she also has HIV.What health workers didn’t realize — right up to the level of a Saskatoon Health Region deputy medical health officer who fielded media questions about the case this week — is that the right to personal health privacy ends when someone else’s health might be jeopardized.
As Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner Gary Dickson made clear Wednesday (see his letter on this page), the legislation covering health privacy does allow for disclosure “to any person that may have been exposed to HIV”.
Read more in the Regina Leader-Post.