Nurse fired for prying into patient records

A Canadian hospital has fired a nurse over allegations that she inappropriately accessed more than 1,300 patient records over the past nine years.

Norfolk General Hospital in Simcoe, Ontario, fired the women in March after the facility received a call from a patient who felt "their information was in the community," NGH spokesperson Janine van den Heuvel told the Delhi News-Record.

The hospital investigated, she said, and found multiple breaches of the Personal Information Protection Act by the nurse dating back to 2004.

Information was "accessed and viewed," said van den Heuvel, and included patients' names, health card numbers, date of birth, addresses, phone numbers, family doctor, next of kin and the reason for a patient's visit, according to the article.

More than 1,300 letters went out Aug. 8 to patients whose information may have been viewed apologizing for the breach. NGH said it voluntarily contacted Information Privacy Commissioner/Ontario who has investigated and "closed" the file on the case. Van den Heuvel said the hospital waited several months to contact patients while it investigated the case.

"The amount of information we had to go though—we had to be very careful and make sure we completely exhausted the process," she said. "It took us a long time to know all the patients and to what extent" their information had been breached.

As a result, the hospital said it has increased the number of "random audits" of employees' usage of electronic medical records, including 15 in the past three weeks.

The firing of the employee is set to go to arbitration. When the hearing is complete, the hospital said it intends to release her name.