INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY INTO BREACH OF PATIENT PRIVACY

The Saskatchewan Ministry of Health is informing 58 patients of a privacy breach involving their personal health information.

Personal health information from 2003 was on a file that was used in an instructional setting in a health management course at the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology (SIAST) Regina campus beginning in 2005-06.

The Ministry of Health is working with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) to determine how the incident happened and to ensure that a breach of this nature does not occur again. The Ministry has also informed SIAST about the situation to ensure the information is no longer in use.

“We take this incident very seriously and are immediately taking steps to make sure this does not happen again,” Ministry of Health Director of Information Policy Sara Hawryluk said. “We sincerely regret any concern or inconvenience this causes to patients.”

Up to 140 students may have viewed the personal health data. The Ministry understands that in the instructional setting, individual personal health information would not likely have been accessed or viewed; however, it was a part of the source file used to show aggregate data by age, gender and region.

All 58 patients whose information was involved are being contacted by the Ministry of Health to advise them of the breach and explain the measures being taken.

The Ministry of Health has strong privacy, confidentiality and security protection in place through the Health Information Protection Act (HIPA), and is committed to continuously improving these safeguards. The Ministry is following OIPC privacy breach guidelines, to determine additional steps that could be taken to reduce the possibility of a similar situation occurring in the future.

-30-

For more information, contact:

Tyler McMurchy
Health
Regina
Phone: 306-787-4083
Email: tmcmurchy@health.gov.sk.ca
Cell: 306-537-3594