Hey Health Privacy Officers in Ontario – you need to know this! The Information and Privacy Commissioner just released new guidelines on its internal procedures for health privacy:  The Code of Procedure for Matters under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004.  It was updated August 2019. Why does this matter to you as a… Read more »

On July 1st a new law came into effect: the Missing Persons Act, 2018. Healthcare organizations and providers need to know about this new law because there may be new documentation from police you will need to review. The police now have more powers when investigating missing persons in Ontario. Missing Person A “missing person”… Read more »

Time flies when you are having fun! We have a lot to celebrate this year: The first big announcement is the addition of another lawyer to our team.  Megan Ferrier joined me in June. Megan is the kind of lawyer everyone wants on their team. She is brilliant and kind. Having another legal brain around… Read more »

Hey lawyer friends! It’s time to talk about time again. It’s Summer. That means we have elongated days of sunshine and warm nights where we actually leave the office and the house to socialize. Right now you may be open to hearing tips of how to expand your experience of time that you are absolutely… Read more »

Yup – you do! I have heard from a lot of healthcare teams recently that they have been struggling with vacation, sick days, leaves of absence and unexpected departures from the Privacy Office.  When you rely on one person in your organization to deal with all the privacy issues, you can feel vulnerable when that… Read more »

I recently witnessed a dispute within my faith community. One congregant was accused of violent and highly inappropriate activity. The synagogue struggled to respond. Things escalated. People took sides. Positions became entrenched. There was a mixture of genuine concern, mythology, innuendo, hyperbole, valid issues to be addressed and unsubstantiated issues that needed to be cleared… Read more »

A patient wants a copy of their health record. You give them your organization’s form to fill out before you give them a copy. What are you allowed to ask on that form? If your questions are not all answered, are you allowed to  send back the access request as “incomplete”? That’s the subject of… Read more »

In healthcare we often repeat that “hand hygiene saves lives” – well so too does digital hygiene. What is digital hygiene? Digital hygiene is a term of art used in the technology and cyber security field to describe positive practices to protect digital information from loss, theft, and unauthorized use, disclosure, modification or destruction. How… Read more »

“The right of an individual to access his or her records is essential to the exercise of other statutory and common law rights, including the right of an individual to determine for himself or herself what shall or shall not be done with his or her own body, the right of an individual to “informational… Read more »

While we live in a highly digitized world, we still rely A LOT on paper in healthcare. As we move towards even more integrated care, the reliance on and existence of paper health records will be a challenge to overcome. From a privacy perspective, paper health records can be tricky to protect from loss, theft,… Read more »