Chatham-Kent Health Alliance’s top administrator says a new electronic record system helped nab two employees snooping on patient files.
The Chatham-Kent hospital group’s top administrator says a new electronic record system helped nab two employees who were snooping through patient files.
Chatham-Kent Health Alliance president Lori Marshall said the checks and balances in place as part of that system worked as intended.
“It’s a very comprehensive system that allows us to not only manage individuals’ health records, but also to protect them in a better way,” she said. “There are a lot of auditing capabilities that come with that system.
“It really was as a result of just our general auditing that we do on a regular basis that we identified these anomalies, and then did more detailed, specific auditing of these two individuals.”
Based on the investigation of the privacy breach – and the lack of a pattern to the inappropriate accesses – hospital brass determined these were cases of “random snooping due to curiosity.”
The nosy employees did not copy or print the health records of the roughly 120 patients affected, hospital officials added.
The hospital group publicly announced the privacy breaches Wednesday afternoon.
Marshall said she’s hopeful that staff and the public know how seriously such breaches are taken, reiterating the employees responsible for the breaches no longer work there.
She said the system can also help determine whether an employee might have made a mistake in good faith, such as accidentally searching for the wrong name.
“(They’d be) in and out very quickly versus someone who may be looking specifically into a file,” Marshall said. “(We) know how long they’ve been in there. We know exactly what areas they’ve looked at.”
Staff are provided annual privacy training in addition to annual hospital information system training. Hospital officials stated there will be further privacy education through its internal communication tools.
The health alliance implemented the new electronic record system in November 2020, providing the hospital with enhanced auditing capabilities and an enhanced ability to protect the privacy and confidentiality of patients.
The health alliance has already reported these privacy breaches to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario and notified affected individuals via mail. The hospital invited those individuals to contact its privacy officer, Melissa Johnson, at 519-352-6401 ext. 6316 with any questions.