Privacy & Confidentiality

The MICs Group of Health Services is committed to protecting the privacy, confidentiality and security of all personal health information to which it is entrusted in order to carry out its mission. If you feel your privacy has been compromised by someone associated with MICs, please contact the Privacy Officer.

MICs maintains a strict confidentiality policy. All team members of the MICs Group of Health Services must respect the confidentiality of matters that are dealt with, discussed or observed in their course of employment at a MICs facility.

Discussion of any of these outside the MICs facility or with individuals not directly involved is considered a breach of trust and a serious offence that will not be tolerated. Board members, clergy, volunteers, and students are required to maintain the same standards of confidentiality as the team members of the MICs Group of Health Services. Leakage of confidential information by MICs team members will be dealt with by disciplinary action.

Frequently asked questions

While you are actively receiving care, you should ask your healthcare provider for information that you want to know about your diagnosis and treatment. After you are discharged from MICs, you will need to submit a written request to the hospital where you were treated:

  • Bingham Memorial Hospital (Matheson)
  • Anson General Hospital (Iroquois Falls)
  • Lady Minto Hospital (Cochrane)

The letter should be addressed to the Health Records Department. You may also obtain a “Release of Information” form from any MICs Health Records Department.

A written request for health records must include the following:

  • Your name
  • Date of birth
  • Mailing address
  • Type of information you need

The request must be dated, signed with your signature, and witnessed and signed by one other person.

MICs retains and manages patient records according to government legislation and the corporation by-laws. This means the hospital may only maintain some of your records.

Whether you want your records released to a relative, friend, family doctor or another institution, you must submit a signed consent giving the hospital authorization to release your information. The consent is valid for six months and must be dated and witnessed.

Children of any age are presumed to have the capacity to consent to the collection, use and disclosure of their personal health information. If there is a conflict between the child and parent, the capable child’s decision prevails with respect to the consent. To be capable of consenting, a patient must be able to understand:

  • The information needed to make a decision on whether or not to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal health information.
  • The consequences of giving, withholding or withdrawing consent.

To obtain records for individuals who are deceased or incapable of signing a consent, proof of executorship or legal signing authority must be submitted with the request.

If you are looking for your birth information (e.g. proof of birth, time of birth), please submit a written request that includes your mother’s full name at the time of your birth.

There are processing fees associated with accessing (viewing) or requesting a photocopy of your personal health information. A prepayment fee must be submitted before accessing or receiving a copy of your personal health information. Please contact the Health Records Department for a fee schedule.

You have a right to access your personal health record and MICs has an obligation to make it available to you with limited exceptions:

  • If releasing your information would put yourself or a third-party at risk, the hospital may choose not to disclose some or all of that information.

MICs collects a combination of personal and health information.

Personal information

  • Your name
  • Date of birth
  • Address
  • Health card number
  • Extended health insurance numbers

Health information

  • Information relating to previous health problems
  • The record of your visits to the hospital
  • What health care we provided during those visits

The information MICs collects from you is used:

  • To provide you with quality health care and follow-up in the community. We need your information to make sure we can make the appropriate diagnosis and provide treatment.
  • To carry out quality assurance to help make us better. By reviewing the care we provide to patients, we can determine what strategies are most successful.
  • To ask you how we are doing. You may be asked to participate in surveys by either the hospital or by specific programs or departments in the hospital that participated in your care.
  • To comply with the law. The law requires hospitals to turn over your personal health information if there is a legal investigation. We also use your information to obtain funding for health services from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and
  • For fundraising. Currently MICs does not use your personal health information to contact you to ask if you would like to make a donation. Should MICs fundraise in this manner in the future, you may request your name be removed from the fundraising contact list at any time.

MICs cannot adequately deliver care without the necessary information. The MICs privacy policy states that we will only collect the information we need for the appropriate episode of care you are undergoing. MICs is required to report certain pieces of information to:

  • Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (billing information)
  • Canadian Institute for Health Information (coded discharged abstracts)
  • Health Canada (Public Health Surveillance)
  • Cancer Care Ontario (pathology reports)

This is done to ensure the health care system is running optimally, and to conduct statistical comparisons of population health characteristics over a broad geographical range. MICs places appropriate safeguards on the transmission of all information disclosed to other organizations and seeks to ensure that are in place and in accordance with the privacy act.

Surveys help the hospital by allowing us to get your opinion on the care and services you receive as a patient. Participation in the surveys is not mandatory and you can decline participation and/or request to be removed from the hospital’s survey list. The collection, uses, disclosures and retentions described above are required as an ongoing component of MICs Group of Health Services’ ability to provide health care to the population it serves, while working to enhance the health status of Canadians.

MICs requires a patient’s expressed consent or a court order to disclose health information to any organization or person not directly involved with your care (Circle of Care). “Circle of Care” is a term used to describe those who provide health care or assist in providing health care to you.

They can provide health care to you confidently assuming they have your implied consent, unless you have expressly withheld or withdrawn consent.

Hospitals are required to keep health records for at least 10 years past the date of the last admission. In some cases, for example, health records for children are kept for 10 years after the child’s 18th birthday. Health information is stored and maintained by the Health Records Departments.

Although you have the right to access your health records, this right does not automatically extend to family members and/or friends. If you consent to let a friend or family member see your record, then the friend/family member may access the part(s) that you have consented to let them see.

If you are unable to give consent for a friend or family member to access your health information due to reasons such as competency or consciousness, the consent decision falls to the appointed substitute decision-maker, such as a spouse, parent or guardian. This person is bound by law to act on your behalf and must make decisions based on their belief of what you would wish done if you were able to decide.

When someone calls the hospital, staff has no way to verify who is calling and what their relationship is to you. Therefore, in order to protect patient privacy, only a minimum amount of information is given out over the telephone.

Only staff involved in your care may access your health information. All MICs staff are bound by a confidentiality policy which is a condition of employment. This policy seeks to ensure that staff only access information on a “need to know basis”. Health professionals are also bound by confidentiality requirements from their professional colleges.

Despite the pressures of an acute-care hospital setting, staff make every effort to discuss health information confidentially.

Health information is protected 3 ways:

  • Administrative Safeguards – The MICs privacy policy governs the manner in which all MICs care providers and other employees manage patient information. Furthermore, all MICs employees must sign a confidentiality agreement as a condition of employment.
  • Physical Safeguards – MICs has a number of physical safeguards which range from locked doors to staff wearing name identification tags to identify themselves as MICs employees.
  • Technical Safeguards – I.T. upgrades the security capabilities of the patient information system on an ongoing basis. The MICs patient information system also uses passwords to protect the system from inappropriate accesses from within and a firewall to protect our system from users on the internet.
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