Another breach of personal information in Saskatchewan has people buzzing about the safety of medical records.
Privacy Commissioner Gary Dickson was notified Wednesday night of a significant number of personal medical records being found in a south Regina recycle bin. Dickson estimates they pulled out about 1000 files.
“You keep those records safe until the time you shred them and they no longer serve their purpose,” said Dickson.
“We see a lot of physicians that are challenged when they have paper records,” said John Bodolai of Nightingale Informatix. They supply physicians with Electronic Medical Systems. “What do they do with these after they retire, after they close their clinic or after a certain number of years? The advantage to electronic medical records is they provide safe and secure storage for these records.”
In Wednesday’s provincial budget the Wall government budgeted $2.4 million dollars to Electronic Medical Record expansion into physician offices, but until then, paper records are still at risk.
“It’s the least secure and leads to issues like we saw yesterday,” said Bodolai. “It’s very unfortunate and I think it’s avoidable.”
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will now launch an investigation into who threw the files away, while those in the walls of power try to figure out a way to keep it from happening again. An individual that disposes of personal records incorrectly can be fined up to $50,000, and spend up to one year in jail. But despite several breaches occurring, a case has never been prosecuted.
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