Privacy – Your Right. Our Responsibility. ...Breakthrough Spring 2005

Breakthrough

Protecting YOUR health information

As mentioned in the last issue of Breakthrough the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA) came into effect on November 1, 2004. This Act provides hospitals and health care providers across Ontario, including CAMH, with new rules on how to collect, use, share and disclose personal health information. For those of you who do not know what personal health information is - it can be described as information about your health or health care history and may be collected either verbally or in writing; information to identify you as the person who it describes.

To ensure CAMH follows the new legislation, we have developed a CAMH Privacy Policy (opens as pdf). All staff and physicians across CAMH have been trained in this policy to ensure that your health information is kept private and confidential. CAMH must let the public know about our information practices, how to contact the Privacy Office at CAMH, how to access or correct personal health information and how to make a complaint to the CAMH Privacy Office or the Office of the Information Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. You will find all this information in a Privacy Brochure that is currently available at various locations throughout CAMH. You can also view our privacy notice (opens as pdf) for a brief description of our privacy practices.

CAMH continues to work and ensure that practices are meeting the legislation.

You can contact the Privacy Office by telephone at 416 535-8501 ext. 3314 or by e-mail at privacy@camh.net for more information.