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 »

Your privacy policy likely requires all staff members to “report any privacy breach” to the Privacy Officer. But do your team members know what a privacy breach looks like or sounds like?  They can’t report if they don’t know what it means. Here are some examples you can include in your training or policies to… 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 »