Category: Hospitals

In Decision 89 of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario deals with an access request, what lengths a health care organization has to go to look for records and what is a “complete health record”. In this case, the complainant asked a community care access centre (CCAC) for access to his deceased wife’s complete… Read more »

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario just released new guidelines “Avoiding Abandoned Health Records: Guidance for Health Information Custodians Changing Practice“. The guidelines cover: Who is the custodian when there is a change of practice? What obligations do custodians have when changing practice? Avoiding abandoned records What to do if you discover abandoned records… Read more »

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario has issued a new health privacy Decision 86. A woman contacted a hospital to have access to her deceased son’s health records.   The hospital provided part of the record but notified the requester that part of the paper record was missing. The requester made a complaint to the… Read more »

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario just issued Decision 85 – which is a new correction case. A hospital received a correction request from the daughter of a deceased patient relating to 4 pages including: physician orders, progress notes, medication administration record and Critical Care Response Team Consultation Record. The complainant believed her mother’s… Read more »

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario just issued decision 84, which is a new access decision. Bottom Line: This decision is consistent with other decisions of the IPC and does not require a change to practice. In this case, a patient of a hospital was concerned that hospital staff were inappropriately viewing her record…. Read more »

Stay with me folks – it’s going to get bumpy. There are some important nuances to understand my headline and this case. Here’s the new health privacy decision of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario #83. This case echoes questions I am asked every week in my practice. It is important reading for any… Read more »

We know this intuitively – but it bears repeating. Health care organizations should be very careful when speaking with the media about specific patient cases. There is a new Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) health privacy decision directly on this topic. Decision 82 Background: A patient of a hospital died. The family members… Read more »

In April 2018, Canadians came together from coast to coast to coast to grieve and support each other when we learned a bus was hit in Saskatchewan tragically killing 16 young hockey players and seriously injuring many of their teammates. The Humboldt Broncos story made international news and reminded us all of the fragility of… Read more »

In health privacy decision 81 of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, a hospital was asked to make a correction to a discharge summary. The complainant wanted certain words written into the discharge summary “I am going home into the care of my parents’ because I live in [their] house” to reflect what he… Read more »

In decision 80 of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, the wife of a deceased patient was concerned that a hospital doctor wrongly shared her husband’s health information by speaking to a third party about the care he received and that the hospital failed to meet its privacy obligations.  These concerns were raised with… Read more »