Health Regions Must Improve Patient Record Access

Health Regions Must Improve Patient Record Access

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 13:45

 

 

The province’s privacy commissioner says both northern health regions need to work on brochures that provide patients with information on how to access their health records.

 

Gary Dixon studied the brochures of all 12 regions in the province, as well as the forms patients fill out to get their records.

 

Dixon says Keewatin Yatthe’s brochure isn’t clear on where a patient should go if they have a problem, while Mamawetan Churchill River doesn’t mention the health privacy law.

 

“It doesn’t tell them they have a right, if they’re dissatisfied with the response from the region, to be able to appeal to our office. And they also talk about the health record as the property of the individual health care facility or clinic, and that’s just wrong. It’s the region, not the individual clinic, that’s the trustee and that you apply to,” he says.

 

Dixon says Mamawetan Churchill River also needs to improve its form, noting that it asks patients to report where their record is being held.

 

He says a patient can say where they had treatment, but that doesn’t mean the record is being held in that facility.

 

Dixon says Keewatin Yatthe is one of three health regions that has a clear and easy to fill out access form.

 

Mamawetan Churchill River’s director of quality improvement and risk management, Teresa Watt, says the region will definitely look at the recommendations.

 

Watt says there is always room for improvement, but notes that no one has ever been denied access to their records.