Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I wanted to ask the Minister about the issue we heard on CBC this morning in regard to a breach of confidentiality of records that were sent to CBC by mistake from a health centre in Norman Wells. I wanted to ask the Minister to tell the people in this House and the people in the North and the Sahtu exactly what happened in regard to this matter of a breach of confidentiality of a person’s medical records.
The honourable Minister of Health, Ms. Sandy Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously this was a serious error. It was an accident. There was a 10-number digit that they had to dial and one number went amiss and it happened to be CBC. Mr. Speaker, I understand that the person is very upset. We are investigating this situation and the person is more upset that it got aired in the media. So I would not want to talk in detail about that.
What I do want to say is that every health authority, health centre, Department of Health, my office, have very strict guidelines on protecting the privacy of the individuals that come into our contact, not to mention the medical information. There are very strict rules that have to be followed. The Sahtu Health Authority tells us that they communicate about two medical records a month and this has never happened before. We have reported it to the privacy officer. We are taking all the steps to clarify the situation and if there are any action items that come out that would help other authorities and all other health centres to revamp the process, we will follow up on that. Thank you.
If it wasn’t reported in the CBC, we kept it quiet and CBC didn’t report this, I want to make sure that in the future, for the confidence of the people in the Sahtu, that our personal medical records will be handled with the utmost professionalism, confidentiality and respect in terms of our staff in the medical field that are distributing our records. I wanted to ask the Minister what type of assurance can she give to the people in the Sahtu and the people in the Northwest Territories that this will never, never, never, never happen again in terms of the way this was reported on CBC?
The people of the Sahtu and every community and region in the Northwest Territories should be assured and they should feel comfortable, and I want them to feel comfortable, that their health care professionals, whether they are social workers and anybody with private information, every profession has a code of conduct on how they deal with private information. It is an absolute no, no to breach any of that information. This was an accident and sometimes it happens. We are very sorry that that has happened. We are investigating to see exactly what happened and any steps that will come out of it that will make the process better, we will implement those and I will undertake to follow up with the Members as to what comes out of that. Thank you.
The Minister has indicated that she’s going to follow up on this incident and she’s going to have a discussion with her department and certainly the Sahtu Health Board in terms of what happened. In this discussion, I want to ask the Minister, when you look at this issue and examine what happened, are there policies that you need to implement right away within the Sahtu Health Board in terms of our health centres and handling our medical records when they’re being asked to be sent to another health centre or community for medical reasons, that there’s strong policies in place, relook at the policies that they have now and that they could be implemented in the Sahtu in the interim, because I’m not sure how long this investigation will take in regard to this matter.
It is important for everyone to know that there is a policy already in place to protect privacy. Every health centre has that, every authority has that. We already have policies and procedures to protect privacy and medical information and confidential information. This is not a case of breach of that procedure. It is a situation where one out of 10 numbers that they pressed was switched and it just happened to be the other number was CBC.
Mr. Speaker, we understand accidents do happen. We will look to see what other measures we need to take to make sure that this doesn’t happen again, and we will take actions to make sure that we do everything humanly possible to make sure that that doesn’t happen. Thank you.
Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Speaker, in the CBC report it’s reported that Privacy Commissioner Elaine Keenan-Bengts says what apparently happened within the Sahtu Health Centre wasn’t good enough in terms of them checking the information as to where the fax was going and confirming that it’s going to a location, it also confirmed that it’s been received at that location. That wasn’t done. This simple oversight hasn’t been looked at. So, again, that’s why I asked Minister about this issue. I know it’s going to take a while to get the report done. Can something like this, what the Privacy Commissioner is saying, can something like this be implemented right away at all the health centres in the Sahtu, where medical records are going be looked at with the utmost respect and confidentiality? Thank you.
We are working with the Privacy Commissioner. We are providing and the Sahtu Health Authority has reported to her in writing, or will report to her in writing, about what happened and what steps are being taken to prevent this from happening again. Understandably, the Sahtu Health Authority is quite upset about what happened. We are very sorry to the individuals involved and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. We are working closely with the Privacy Commissioner. Thank you.
The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
