What would it take to push forward a sluggish electronic patient records initiative?  An of gargantuan proportion and one irate privacy commissioner perhaps?

In the case of Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) and Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) Dr. Ann Cavoukian at least that seems to be how things are shaping up. 

Sometime in March this year, the CCO lost several packages of patient records pertaining to over 20,000 cancer patients. Since then investigations conducted have brought down the number of missing records (originally sent by CCO to various doctor’s offices via Canada Post’s Xpresspost courier service) to just 7,000 colon cancer screening reports. 

In an unprecedented move yesterday, Cavoukian issued ordered CCO to stop the practice of sending out sensitive patient records in paper format. Cavoukian also gave the CCO until January 13 next year to show proof of compliance and report back to her office on their progress towards adopting an electronic medical records (EMR) system that will transmit the sensitive private data to doctor’s office through the Internet instead.  

“I needed to give this strong order because the loss of 7,000 patient records is totally unacceptable. It could have been prevented,” Cavoukian told me yesterday. “They better comply with the order.”  



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