Vancouver Coastal Health worker fired for checking out media personalities’ medical records

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      A Vancouver Coastal Health employee has been fired for violating the privacy of five local media personalities.

      According to the regional health authority, the worker admitted to looking at the medical records of the five individuals, who have received care through VCH, for non-clinical reasons out of “curiosity”. The privacy breach was discovered in late November during a “routine” audit of patient file access, VCH says.

      “That a staff member would breach a patient’s right to privacy is extremely disappointing and violates the confidentiality agreement that must be signed by each of our employees,” Dr. David Ostrow, president and CEO of VCH, said in a news release today (December 6). “It also violates the trust people place in us, and we apologize not only to those directly impacted by this but to all our patients, clients and residents.”

      VCH says it has notified the media personalities but will not be publicly identifying them. News1130 has reported that one of the affected “high-profile” individuals works at the radio station.

      According to VCH, the fired employee has maintained the information in the medical records wasn’t shared with anyone else.

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      Comments

      5 Comments

      Arnetta Agosto

      Dec 6, 2012 at 3:49pm

      “That a staff member would breach a patient's right to privacy is extremely disappointing and violates the confidentiality agreement that must be signed by each of our employees"

      Maybe its time to breach "Staff Members" right to privacy and see how they like it!

      Mackenna

      Dec 6, 2012 at 4:29pm

      Time to get rid of these bloated health authority administrations and return management of health care to the government.

      Jack Frost

      Dec 7, 2012 at 8:24pm

      I believe it's also a breach of confidentiality that the Media published the names of these so called celebrities.

      The worker did not do that.

      Martin Dunphy

      Dec 7, 2012 at 11:09pm

      Jack:

      I believe it was one of the "celebrities" ' own outlets that was the first to report three of the names.

      Bored

      Dec 8, 2012 at 10:40pm

      why did anybody get fired for this? governments snoop around in all our data incl. police etc. so then everyone involved in government, police and courts should be fired as well.