The North Bay Regional Health Centre recognizes that the personal health information of our patients must be treated with respect and sensitivity and privacy must be protected. The personal health information we collect may include name, date of birth, address, health card number, health history, records of visits to the North Bay Regional Health Centre and the care received during those visits. Occasionally, we collect personal health information about our patients from other sources if we have obtained consent to do so or if the law permits.
We use your personal health information for the following purposes:
- To provide the care and treatment patients will receive while at the North Bay Regional Health Centre
- To obtain payment for treatment and care from OHIP, WSIB, private insurers or others
- To plan, administer, manage, and improve our internal operations
- To conduct risk management and quality improvement activities including completing patient satisfaction surveys (written and phone)
- To teach
- To compile statistics
- To ask for support to improve our health care services and programs, and
- To comply with legal and regulatory requirements.
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We disclose / share your personal health information on a need to know basis with:
- Our staff who need to know to provide care, including: physicians, nurses, technicians, therapists and other health care professionals
- Other health care providers who are not our employees but may be required to assist in providing health care once our patients are no longer at the North Bay Regional Health Centre. The "Circle of Care" may include:
- Health care practitioners and groups of health care practitioners, public and private hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories, ambulance services, community care access corporations, community service providers, psychiatric facilities, independent health facilities, homes for the aged, rest homes, nursing homes, care homes, and homes for special care and community health or mental health centres, children services who meet PHIPA requirements, and programs and services whose primary purposes are providing health care.
- Partners who are not our employees but belong to services meeting PHIPA requirements.
- Children participating in the North Bay Regional Health Centre - Regional Mental Health's Psychiatric Program may have some personal health information stored on the NBRHC's Client Information Management System ("CIMS").
Children participating in the NBRHC's Wordplay/Jeux de mots Infant Hearing program, may have some information stored in the provincial database, Integrated Services for Children's Information System ("ISCIS")
- The Ministry of Health and Long Term Care to support the development of strategies to enhance the delivery of health care services to patients in Ontario, or
- As required by law.
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We commit to:
- Taking steps to protect personal health information from theft, loss and unauthorized access, copying, modification, use, disclosure and disposal
- Monitoring and managing our privacy compliance
- Taking steps to ensure that everyone who performs services for us protects privacy and only uses personal health information for the purposes consented to, and
- Asking permission before disclosing any information for purposes not related directly to care (e.g. insurance companies, lawyers etc), unless otherwise required by law.
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You have the right to:
- Withdraw consent for some of the above uses and disclosures by contacting us, and
- Access and / or request corrections to personal health information you have legal rights to.
- to complain to the Chief Privacy Officer of the North Bay Regional Health Centre or the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario if you think we have violated privacy rights.
The Commissioner can be reached at:
Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario
2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400
Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8
Tel: 1-800-387-0073
www.ipc.on.ca
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Unless a patient or substitute decision-maker tells us not to:
- We will disclose patient information to other health care providers in the "Circle of Care" who need to know this information to provide the patient with care or help provide the patient with care, and
- We will tell anyone who calls the North Bay Regional Health Centre asking about a patient, that the patient is in the hospital and which nursing unit they are on.
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For more information:
- For information about accessing or correcting personal health information, our Privacy Practices, or to raise concerns/complaints, please contact Wanda Doupe.
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