Patient says her Group Health Centre files were accessed inappropriately

A Group Health Centre employee accessed a patient's personal health information file five times over a period of six months, says an audit report provided to that patient by the GHC.

In total, the employee viewed 49 pages in a the patient's file and admitted to doing so soley for the purpose of snooping, according to the audit.

The patient told SooToday that when she became suspicious of the employee's behaviour she asked the GHC to do a privacy audit on her file, something that would not be difficult given the GHC's use of an electronic filing system.

The GHC Privacy Officer went back a year from the time the patient asked for the audit.

The audit trail showed that the employee the patient was suspicious of had accessed her file five times, sometimes for as little as a few seconds to look at one page to longer periods of time during with the nurse viewed several sections of the patient file going through records from several physicians, right back to her birth records.

"There are things in my file that could really ruin lives - that would devastate some people I care about," the patient told SooToday on Tuesday. "I can't believe she would do this."

"The privacy officer told me the nurse said she didn't tell anyone any of the information she found in my file," the patient said.

The patient says GHC has been very forthcoming with information for her but she said it isn't very reassuring.

"Okay, if she was mad at me or something, fine," said the patient. "Creep my Facebook page. Throw stones at my house. But this? Who does this? What could she possibly hope to gain from finding out my blood type, medication history and what medical procedures I've had?"

A Group Health Centre spokesperson did not immediately return calls for comment.