A Central Saanich man who received someone else’s confidential medical lab report in the mail has so little faith in the health authority that he refused to give up the documents until a uniformed Island Health security guard came to his house.
John Brown’s tug of war with Island Health began Dec. 6 when he discovered an older woman’s medical record among those belonging to him and his new husband. From the documents, it appears all three were tested on the same day in August 2012.
“You never expect to get medical documents that are so confidential,” Brown said.
“Even when we did the tests, they didn’t want to take our last name. They took an initial. That’s how confidential they are supposed to be. But that didn’t happen.”
Island Health is carrying out a full and complete review of the situation, said spokeswoman Sarah Plank.
“We have a lot of different systems in place to protect our patients’ medical information. But in a human system, errors can occur. And although this type of error does happen very rarely, we want to do everything we can to make sure something similar doesn’t happen again,” Plank said.
After receiving the record, Brown phoned the health authority. A team leader called back and said she would send someone from Island Health to retrieve the woman’s document.
“Instead, she sent a courier. And I refused to give them to this guy because he doesn’t work for Island Health. I didn’t want this lady’s documents going anywhere else,” Brown said.
On Monday, an Island Health employee came to pick up the documents. Brown asked to take a photograph of her employee badge so he would know the documents were in the right hands.
Although the employee had her identification badge, she wouldn’t really let him see it, he said.
“She was on the phone to several different people and they refused to let me take a photo of her badge. … Then she left in a huff without the documents,” Brown said.
“They couldn’t understand why I would want the picture. I said, ‘If someone had my documents, I’d want to know who got them.’ ”
Brown then phoned the older woman to tell her he had received her medical lab report in error. “She was pretty shocked, I think.”
On Tuesday, Island Health retrieved the documents. Brown said he handed the information over after an Island Health uniformed security guard came to his house.
“We take the privacy and confidentiality of our patients very seriously,” Plank said. “We sincerely apologize to the patient who was affected by this. We contacted the patient as soon as we found out and have also confirmed that the patient’s doctor got the lab results so there were no adverse impacts on her care.”
The patient understands an error occurred, she said. “It’s my understanding she’s satisfied with the actions we’ve taken.”
Plank said the health authority took immediate steps to retrieve the documents, but did not feel it was appropriate to allow Brown to photograph the employee’s identification badge.
“These days, with technology, it’s very easy to reproduce things,” she said.
Brown decided to make the incident public because he believes these mistakes happen “way too often.”
“Island Health is sweeping these things under the rug and not telling the truth about how many mistakes they make,” he said.
“These documents had telephone numbers, address, name, age, doctor’s name and consulting physician. I think the information is too personal to be making these kinds of mistakes.”
The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner was notified of the incident by Island Health and is monitoring the situation, said spokeswoman Cara McGregor.
