Doctor-patient confidentiality
A question raised in Nova Scotia this week is one that governments and health authorities across the region must grapple with. How can Atlantic Canadian health providers have timely and seamless sharing of health records while still protecting patients’ private information?
There is no question that provinces must have up-to-date medical records systems. In fact, the federal government made electronic record sharing a contingency for the billions it is paying out through bilateral agreements being signed across the country right now.
Until 2020, for example, about 70 per cent of doctors offices in Prince Edward Island were still using paper charts. Now, about 90 per cent of family practitioners have been enrolled in the electronic medical record program, with a patient portal planned this spring.
HEALTH APPS
Newfoundland and Labrador is also about to take its next step in implementing digital records, by launching a website and app in April that will give residents access to their own lab results, prescriptions and other health information.
After a cyberattack held N.L. health records for ransom in 2021, however, patients there and around the region have reason to be cautious about free access to medical information.
“The personal health record leverages the highest privacy standards that we have, and people of the province can be assured that their information is protected,” Steve Greene, of N.L. Health Services, assured those attending an announcement about Myhealthnl.
In Nova Scotia, the Yourhealthns app launched in November, while New Brunswickers were granted access to the mobile Myhealthnb app in January. This service was expanded from a website originally set up so residents could check their COVID-19 test results.
PRIVACY CONCERNS
The issue in Nova Scotia isn’t that this long-awaited service is now available. It’s that the bill introduced to amend the Personal Health Information Act and set out regulations for record sharing, doesn’t have clear enough language about protection of privacy.
Especially troubling is a line that requires providers “to disclose personal health information to the health minister or someone acting on behalf of the minister.”
Why on earth would a politician need access to any individual’s health information?
The Department of Health says it doesn’t want a single person’s health file, but the bill would allow it to collect aggregate information in order to better plan services and resources.
DATA BREACHES
However, Dr. Gus Grant, CEO and registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, told a March 25 standing committee that this bill would fundamentally change the pillar of doctor-patient confidentiality.
As N.S. NDP Leader Claudia Chender put it, we are less concerned about how government claims it plans to use these records but rather more focussed on how bad actors can take advantage of what the legislation doesn’t protect. If checks aren’t in place, this data could be open to everyone from a snoopy neighbour who works in a clinic to an international ransomware attacker who can shut down the whole system.
Before this bill becomes law — and while other Atlantic Canadian governments are working on their apps — authorities must do all they can so privacy breaches don’t happen.