Fraser Health is promising an investigation and review of privacy policies at Chilliwack General Hospital (CGH) after internal records bearing the names of patients ended up on a Chilliwack road.
In late September, a resident of Tamihi Way found three pieces of paper from CGH on a street in the Garrison Crossing area soon after garbage pickup.
The papers comprised an entire “Team Report” on a 29-bed section of CGH. Included in the report were the names, ages, admission dates, attending physician and diagnoses for 27 different patients, along with hand-scrawled notes.
The diagnoses range from Parkinson’s and pancreatitis to lumbar pain and metastatic breast cancer. One patient’s diagnosis is listed as “Failure to cope (can’t pee).” Another person is listed as having had a colonoscopy.
The report is dated Sept. 13, 2011, at 3: 45 a.m.
Robert Smith, a UBC professor and former CEO of the Fraser Health Authority, said taking such medical records home is “verboten.”
“The confidentiality of patients is paramount and there’s a number of privacy regulations around things like medical records, so if somebody removed that and it’s showing up on the street, that’s a serious problem for Fraser Health and they would need to investigate that.”
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The wives of two of the patients listed on the records agree.
“I think that’s disgusting,” said Shirley Le Texier, whose husband Ronald is one of those patients listed on the report, “I’d like to find out how that happened.”
Georgina Heaps, whose husband, Edward, was also on the report was similarly astonished.
“Oh, my goodness, that’s kind of annoying,” she said. “Very annoying.
“I’m kind of amazed that these are out and I don’t think they should be . . . . These things are all supposed to be personal and not out in the public like that, especially out in the street.”
The papers were later turned in to the Chilliwack Times. Chilliwack General Hospital site director Norma Pauls retrieved the papers from the Times office Friday morning.
Fraser Health spokesperson Roy Thorpe told the Times that the papers were “shift hand-off notes” and should not have left the hospital.
“Ensuring patient confidentiality is a top priority across Fraser Health,” said Thorpe. “As soon as we learned of the potential privacy breach here, we acted swiftly to collect the information, dispose of it properly, assess the information to determine what, if any, information was at risk.”
Thorpe said that CGH has specific policies regarding the disposal of patient records. Documents are normally collected in secured bins and shredded.
“In this case, it appears that did not happen.”
Thorpe said the hospital, under the guidance of the Fraser Health privacy office, are notifying each patient who was listed on the report and investigating the breach. The Office of the Information Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) has also been notified.
“Chilliwack hospital will be reviewing its procedures relating to the disposal of patient information to ensure that something like this does not happen again,” said Thorpe. “They have policies and procedures in place, but obviously there has been an incident where that didn’t happen so they will be reviewing to try and figure out why and where.
“We have no reason to believe at this time that the information was widely disseminated, but we’re sensitive to people’s concerns.”
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