St. Joe’s contacting 230 patients whose health records were faxed to wrong people
About 230 patients at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton had their health records recently faxed to the wrong person in what the hospital attributed to an error."
St. Joe's said in a release Friday that the misdirected faxes - which occurred between 2020 and 2021 - came to light after a comprehensive review of its privacy policies and practices.
In almost all cases, the faxes were inadvertently sent to the wrong health-care professional, such as a previous family doctor, who then informed (us) of the error and confirmed they destroyed the fax they received," the hospital said, adding affected patients are currently being notified.
It's unclear whether sensitive details were included in the health records.
The hospital said the majority of the 900 misdirected faxes recorded in 2020 stemmed from health records being sent to patients' primary-care providers who had unknowingly changed numbers.
An intense" review, however, later found 122 of those occurred because of a staffing error, St. Joe's said.
In almost every circumstance, the error happened because there was either a miscommunication between the patients and the registration staff resulting in incorrect health provider contact information being recorded, or human error (resulting) in the wrong provider receiving the information."
The misdirected faxes mark the latest in a string of privacy-related blunders at St. Joe's that have come under heavy criticism from experts, sparked a probe from Ontario's privacy watchdog and even led to an employee being fired.
In April, a Spectator analysis revealed St. Joe's reported 2,183 privacy breaches to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario between 2018 and 2020 - the second most in the province.
Ninety-three per cent of breaches committed during the three-year period analyzed by The Spectator were due to misdirected faxes, while the remaining seven per cent were due to unauthorized access by staff - some intentional (snooping), others unintentional (email errors). There we are also two cases of staff thefts: a stolen laptop and a stolen sign-in sheet.
St. Joe's attributed the high number of privacy breaches to the hospital's migration to a new electronic system for medical records in 2017, which included automated faxing of patient information to family doctors.
But despite transitioning to the digital system five years ago, misdirected faxes continue to be a problem: of the 150 privacy breaches in 2021, misdirected faxes accounted for 120.
The Spec's analysis came on the heels of a shocking breach that saw a St. Joe's employee fired in March after they snooped into the files of 49 patients out of curiosity."
There were four other St. Joe's staff members who were involved in intentional privacy breaches affecting between one and six patients in 2021. All were disciplined. None were fired.
Sebastian Bron is a reporter at The Spectator. sbron@thespec.com