“What we are most concerned about is electronic health records,” said Mel Holley, the acting Manitoba Ombudsman.
“Right across the country what we are starting to see are what’s called ‘Snooping’ cases,” he said. “That is where people, because they have access to it, can now suddenly get into your electronic health record. That is an unprecedented access.”
He said thousands of people can have access to someone’s electronic health records, and there have been cases where people do the snooping for personal reasons, out of curiosity.
The Office of the Manitoba Ombudsman has been involved in increasing awareness about this issue.
Holley said it is human nature to be curious and to want to snoop, and with electronic records it can be easier to this.
Liz Loewen, director of co-ordination of care with Manitoba e-Health, said electronic health records do have some safeguards to protect privacy.
She explains the e-Health system works to help streamline health information.
“It’s a system we put in place that takes information from other systems,” she said. “Health-care providers don’t input information into it directly. It pulls together information from other sources, and makes it available to them in one place.”
Loewen noted sometimes a patient may have had procedures, such as lab work, performed in another location, but with e-Health, their primary doctor can access this information easily when reviewing a patient’s health needs.
“Now they can actually go into the system and look and see those results, and make their clinical decisions based on up-to-date information,” she said.
In response to the Ombudsman’s report dealing with the question of privacy, Loewen said there are controls in place to help protect a patient’s privacy.
“In order to have access to the system, they need to be authorized by their employer to have that access,” she said. “They have access to the system only for what they need to provide care.”
There are also measures in place so the public can control their information. For example, a patient can put a Disclosure Directive in place.
“A Disclosure Directive allows an individual to hide their clinical information in the system,” Loewen said. “What is still available is their name and address, so the health-care provider can identify them. But they can’t see the clinical information; it is hidden in the system. Only a certain select group of health-care providers are able to unmask that.”
Loewen also stressed that a patient can also ask who has seen their records.
“If an individual is concerned their information is being accessed inappropriately, they can ask us and we can provide them with a list of who has been in contact with their information in that system,” she said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Angela Brown
Quelle/Source: Portage Daily Graphic, 30.07.2012
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