Health chiefs at odds over ‘breach of confidentiality’

HEALTH chiefs appear to be odds over the HSE practice of giving Covid-19 test results to employers before employees.

The Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said that employers receiving Covid-19 test results before their staff is a ‘breach of confidentiality’.

It has emerged that some test results of individuals who had tested positive for Covid-19 have been disclosed to their employers – mostly in large workforces.

However, HSE chief executive Paul Reid wasn’t in agreement with Dr Holohan’s view of the practice.

Mr Reid told the Dáil’s Covid-19 committee after the Chief Medical Officer’s testimony that public health officials had discretion in exceptional cases ‘such as a pandemic’ to inform employers ahead of employees about the results of a Covid-19 test and that it was a judgment call for them to make. ‘There may have been one case – probably one case that we know of – where the employer was notified [about] the significant number of positive cases and that discretion is for the public health official to make,’ he told the committee.

Dr Holohan told the committee that ‘employers should not be receiving results for employees’.

Speaking at the special Covid-19 committee in the Dáil, Dr Holohan said: ‘We have had some reports of employers receiving results in respect of individual patients – that’s a breach of confidentiality. Full stop.’

The Data Protection Commission has also confirmed that it has received a number of complaints about the practice.

Last night, patient advocate and director of the Irish Patients’ Association, Stephen McMahon, said that this was a ‘major breach of confidentiality’.

‘The test is about the employee, who hopefully won’t become a patient. That is private confidential information,’ he said.