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Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner
April 2, 2012

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner Comments on the
One Year Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Personal Health Information Act (PHIA)

Since the Personal Health Information Act (PHIA) [pronounced “fee-ah”] was proclaimed in April of 2011, significant progress has been made on a number of fronts to protect personal health information in this Province. First and foremost, however, it must be acknowledged that the groundwork for success was laid prior to proclamation. Following passage in the House but prior to proclamation of PHIA into law, the PHIA Implementation Steering Committee was established by the Department of Health and Community Services to undertake the work of helping to prepare custodians of personal health information for compliance with the law. This committee also served as a sounding board and a consultative body for the department as decisions were made on matters of policy and the later development of regulations. Much of the work of the Steering Committee was accomplished through a variety of Working Groups. The fruits of that labour, as well as material produced solely by the department, can be found at: www.health.gov.nl.ca/health/phia/index.html 

In our view, this process has never received the recognition it deserves. Through the Steering Committee and Working Groups, senior staff in the department were actively engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, from the Regional Health Authorities to Memorial University, the Workplace Health Safety and Compensation Commission, the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information, several colleges and associations representing the health professions, and others. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OPIC) was also a full participant in this process.

Commissioner Ed Ring offered the following comments: “An enormous amount of work was accomplished by this PHIA Steering Committee and Working Groups, and I wish to recognize the department for the cooperative, collaborative, positive, respectful process that they undertook to engage the many stakeholders who played a role in preparing for this new law to come into force. When my staff and I have had the opportunity to compare our experiences with Commissioner’s Offices in other jurisdictions where similar legislation is in force or in development, it is clear that not all jurisdictions have taken the same approach. I have always taken the opportunity at the national level to promote the cooperative and consensus-based process which was undertaken here as a model for the development and implementation of health privacy legislation. The department’s decision to involve my Office as a full partner in this process must be applauded.”

Since PHIA came into force a year ago, there has been significant progress towards good privacy protection on several fronts. First and foremost, the four Regional Health Authorities (Labrador Grenfell, Eastern, Western, and Central), have all demonstrated a commitment towards PHIA compliance. They have collaborated to establish policies of mutual benefit and shared best practices and lessons learned. They have established high standards of professionalism in their dealings with the public when there have been privacy breaches, and generally speaking we have found that the breaches that have occurred have been taken very seriously. The OIPC applauds and encourages their continued interaction with our Office, whether in response to our investigation of a privacy complaint, or whether they are reporting to us that a breach has occurred and explaining the steps they are taking to handle it. We are also pleased to work with the Regional Health Authorities to provide our assistance and input wherever it may assist with better compliance of PHIA. There is always more work to do, however, as new staff need to be trained and new technologies and practices emerge which require additional training and policy development.

The largest task which lies ahead, however, is in relation to the many health professionals in private practice. PHIA applies not only to the large, public sector custodians of personal health information, but also to the many individual custodians, who are physicians, pharmacists, physiotherapists, dentists, massage therapists, etc. PHIA contains very specific requirements which must be adhered to, and it is simply not enough to assume that past practices will suffice for PHIA compliance. We encourage individual practitioners, as well as their professional associations and colleges, to learn more about the obligations placed upon health professionals by PHIA. According to Commissioner Ring, “the single greatest challenge to compliance with PHIA is the fact that there has been a fairly weak uptake of this message by some independent health professionals. There are very serious penalties in PHIA for certain types of non-compliance, and unfortunately it may be that such penalties will have to be levied and publicized before these practitioners realize what is at stake.”

Overall, Commissioner Ed Ring sees a mixed bag for PHIA compliance after one year. He is very pleased with the work of the department in getting PHIA up and running, and is also pleased with many of the larger custodians, including the Regional Health Authorities. Much more work needs to be done by individual health professionals, however, and he calls upon their professional colleges and associations to protect the interests of their members by taking up the cause of PHIA compliance. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner is willing to assist any individual custodian, association or college who wishes to work towards better PHIA compliance, and we encourage those individuals and groups to get in touch with us.

For more information, please see the OIPC website at www.oipc.nl.ca

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Media contact:
Ed Ring
Information and Privacy Commissioner
709-729-6309

2012 04 02             1:15 p.m.

 
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