Category: Hospitals

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 »

Why is privacy important? Because it is essential for building trust. Trust pops up time and time again in privacy breach stories. In the 2017 sentencing hearing for a social worker in an Ontario family health team who was successfully prosecuted for looking at the health records of five clients without authorization (she had accessed… Read more »

Trust. Trust is the foundation of healthcare. Without trust, patients delay receiving care. Without trust, patients do not share the truth that helps clinicians uncover what is actually happening. Where trust is compromised, patients, their families and caregivers feel vulnerable and unsafe. They go elsewhere or nowhere to seek help. I’ve been studying “trust” in… Read more »

You and your community have signed up to be a Wave 1 Ontario Health Team. Does it feel like you are on a roller coaster? You signed up. You’ve strapped yourself into the seat. You’ve turned the first corner and you hear the “kk-chug”. You start the steep, jerky climb. up. up. up. You are… Read more »

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario released a new resource today for the general public called “Accessing Your Deceased Relative’s Personal Information“. The resource first addresses rights of access to records held by government. Then the IPC provides guidance to the public how to obtain health information from healthcare providers. The IPC answers the… Read more »

This comes as a surprise to most lay people. In Ontario, and in many jurisdictions around the world, children make their own health privacy decisions when they are “capable” of doing so and not when they reach a specific age. What does that mean? Capacity is presumed. Meaning, healthcare providers presume everyone is capable to… Read more »

One of the most important things to remember when working in health care is that you are not alone. When in doubt, ask for advice. If you ever have cause to think to yourself: “Wow. This is the hardest situation I’ve ever had to manage.” “In all my years of doing this, I am really… Read more »

In the last month I have been asked three times a variation on the theme of this question: “Do we have to tell a patient the full names of our staff if the patient asks?” The answer is generally, yes. Today, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) published an order on this exact… Read more »

In a new health privacy decision of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, we find out what needs to be proven to show a patient is making a request for access to health records in “bad faith”. Decision 87:  Interprets “Bad Faith” Requests A patient saw a chiropodist at a foot clinic. The patient wanted a copy… Read more »