Your Patients’ Privacy
We understand that privacy in primary care is a complex issue. HFHT Privacy policies and documents can be found publicly, here, including privacy breach protocol.
If you have questions about best practices, reporting or breeches, the Hamilton Family Health Team can help you and your practice. Contact us at privacy@hamiltonfht.ca. Read on for information about privacy at your practice.
Privacy in Primary Care
Tracking Breaches Required by IPC
The Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) of Ontario requires that all Health Information Custodians (HICs) must track privacy breaches and report on the type and frequency on an annual basis. The HFHT will prepare an aggregated report for submission annually (March) on behalf of all HFHT practice teams. You should complete the online reporting form on a monthly basis in order for us to compile this information for the IPC.
You will receive an email with your responses for each monthly report, for your records.
HFHT Breach Reporting Form
Please also see our breach reporting form if you’ve had an incident.
Privacy Training
We encourage practice staff and physicians to take our 2-hour virtual privacy training session led by a health privacy lawyer once every three years.
You can sign up for privacy training here:
In the years between attending these sessions, you can view one (possibly two) short privacy videos issued by HFHT. We will inform you by email when there is a short privacy video for you to watch.
Everyone in HFHT is expected to sign an annual privacy pledge acknowledging they understand their privacy responsibilities. We will facilitate this when you participate in training and upon viewing the privacy video(s) each year and you will receive a confirmation email that training is completed.
EMR Privacy Audits
The HFHT is committed to annually reporting to our Board of Directors the number of practices who have completed audits in the past year. When you do an audit, please follow the steps in the EMR Audit Guide below, pertaining to your EMR. To easily track the number of EMR audits done per practice per year, we have included it as a question in the online reporting form referred to in the section above.
Physicians should be using the privacy audit tracking forms that come in the step-by-step guides to keep track of the audits they perform. Keeping a record of regular audits may help to better protect you in the event of a privacy breach.
NOTE TO OSCAR USERS: Currently, the Security Log Report has limited functionality regarding eChart navigation. You can still perform EMR audits on your system but should be aware of the limitations of the audit.
Contact your OSCAR service provider for assistance in performing comprehensive privacy audits. Please ensure all private patient charts are audited regularly.