An affected person in an IPC complaint file made a procedural request that the IPC disclose to him a number of documents, including records of the complainant’s personal health information, in order to participate in the IPC’s review of the complaint under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA). The complaint concerns allegations that the respondent Sinai Health System (the hospital) contravened PHIPA by, among other things, failing to implement and enforce the complainant’s withdrawal of consent in respect of her personal health information after the complainant reported to the hospital that the affected person had sexually assaulted her during a medical examination. At the relevant time, the affected person was a doctor with privileges at the hospital. Although the complainant initially objected to the doctor’s disclosure request, she ultimately did not take issue with the request.
This interim decision sets out the adjudicator’s decision on the doctor’s disclosure request. After considering the requirements of procedural fairness in this case, based on relevant factors including the nature of the decision to be made, the role of the doctor as an affected person in the complaint, and the statutory context governing the IPC, among other factors, the adjudicator grants the doctor’s disclosure request in part. She decides to disclose most, but not all, of the documents the doctor requested.
With respect to the doctor’s request for the complaint documentation (i.e., the documents originating the complaint to the IPC) and the mediator’s report (which an IPC mediator issued to the complainant and the respondent hospital at an earlier stage of the complaint), the adjudicator decides to disclose these documents in part. She discloses to the doctor only those portions of the documents that relate to the issues to be decided in the review. She severs from the documents information that relates to other issues that were fully and finally resolved at earlier stages of the complaint. The severed information does not relate to the doctor, or to the issues remaining to be decided in the review, and its disclosure is not required for the purposes of procedural fairness to the doctor.
The adjudicator also denies the doctor’s request for disclosure of the complainant’s complete patient chart “up to the end of the time period at issue.” Instead, she decides to disclose to the doctor only those discrete records of personal health information from the complainant’s patient chart that are relevant, and proportionate, in the circumstances, in view of the specific allegations of unauthorized use and disclosure by the doctor that are at issue in the review. In addition, to protect the privacy of the complainant and the integrity of the IPC’s processes, the adjudicator orders that certain express conditions and restrictions attach to the handling of these records from the complainant’s patient chart. The conditions and restrictions, which are consistent with obligations imposed in comparable proceedings, are set out in undertakings enclosed with the parties’ copies of this interim decision.
These undertakings restrict the use and disclosure of these records of the complainant’s personal health information by the doctor and his legal counsel except for the purposes of the review (and any court proceedings arising from the review), and ensure the security of the records. If they wish to receive these records, the doctor and his legal counsel must first agree to these conditions and restrictions, by signing and returning the undertakings to the adjudicator.
After the adjudicator makes the disclosure described in this decision, she will continue the review to address the substantive issues raised by the complaint, including the issue of whether the hospital implemented the complainant’s withdrawal of consent (including by notifying its agents of the withdrawal of consent), in accordance with PHIPA.