Patient Confidentiality

ctvedmonton.ca

Hundreds of patients are now being contacted by Covenant Health after a staff member didn't follow policy and some unencrypted patient information was misplaced.

Covenant Health addressed the media Monday morning saying it made a mistake after an unencrypted back-up hard drive containing 3,600 photos and two videos went missing. Some of the images include lab specimens, surgery and infant bereavement.

"Many people are worried about identity theft and rightfully so these days. We believe there is limited risk or low risk of identity theft associated with this. From my perspective, we made a mistake and we did not live up to our obligations to protect this information," said president and CEO of Covenant Health Patrick Dunelle.

CTV News was told a staff member did not follow policy and left the information under his desk. During a move on Jan.17th, that information went missing.


Covenant Health realized the information went missing on Jan. 28th and reported it to the privacy commissioner.

"A horror show like this one scares people and it concerns them," said privacy commissioner Frank Work.


Friends of Medicare say this particular incident undermines confidence.

"The government needs to standardize and reinforce the confidentiality rules that come from the province, so we don't see instance like this in the future," said David Eggen, Friends of Medicare executive director.
The staff member has been spoken to. Officials won't say whether that person has been fired.

Out of the 233 patients, 147 have already been contacted.

Covenant Health has set up a hotline and is asking patients who may have suffered a late term pregnancy loss between 2002 and 2010 to call 1-855-735-9900.