Under the Personal Health Information Protection Act (the Act), Bellwood Health Services Inc. (Bellwood) received a request from a former client for access to records relating to his treatment. Bellwood provided the requester, now the complainant, a complete copy of what it describes as his “official health record.” In addition to the official health record, the complainant sought access to his counsellor’s handwritten notes. Bellwood provided the complainant with a copy of the counsellor’s notebook, in which other clients’ personal health information had been withheld. Bellwood advised that the counsellor’s handwritten “loose working notes” had been shredded and therefore it was unable to provide the complainant with access to those notes. The complainant sought verification that Bellwood had provided him with access to all of his personal health information from the counsellor’s notebook. He also took issue with Bellwood’s destruction of the counsellor’s loose notes, which occurred after he submitted his request for access to them.
In this decision, the adjudicator finds that the counsellor’s notebook is a record of the complainant’s personal health information, but that it is not dedicated primarily to the complainant’s personal health information. His right of access is therefore limited to his personal health information in the record that can reasonably be severed from the remainder of the record. Upon review of the record, the adjudicator finds that there are small portions of the complainant’s personal health information to which he has not yet been provided access. She orders Bellwood to provide the complainant with access to those portions of the record.
The adjudicator also accepts Bellwood’s position that the counsellor’s loose notes would have contained the complainant’s personal health information; however, given that those records have been destroyed such that access is now impossible, she finds that no useful purpose would be served by determining the extent of the complainant’s right of access to those loose notes.
Finally, the adjudicator considers Bellwood’s handling and retention of the counsellor’s loose notes, and determines that it has acted in accordance with its obligations under section 13 of the Act.