Faxed patient files disturb Yellowknife woman

A Yellowknife woman says she has received about a dozen faxed pages of confidential medical information about N.W.T. patients — some of whom she knows — getting cancer treatment in Alberta.

Kathy Paul Drover said the pages that came through her personal fax machine over the past three or four years, including at least one from the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, were meant to go to Stanton Territorial Hospital.

Her fax number is one digit off from that of a specialist clinic at the Yellowknife hospital, she said.

"It was terrible," Drover said Wednesday. "In fact, some of them, I knew the people. I found it a huge responsibility because it's not information that I want to know."

Drover came forward with her story after she heard a CBC News report this week about dozens of pages of medical records being faxed to the CBC's Yellowknife station by mistake.

The records, which included blood and Pap test results, came from the health centre in Norman Wells, N.W.T., and were intended to go to a health centre in Old Crow, Yukon. A dialing error was to blame, the head of the Sahtu Health Authority in Norman Wells told CBC News earlier this week.

Tried to notify authorities

Drover said the first time she received a medical fax, she forwarded the information to Stanton hospital and asked that the sender be notified of the dialing mistake.

But Drover said she has never heard back from either the Yellowknife hospital or the senders of the faxes.

"For it to happen once is a mistake," she said. "For it to happen as many times as it has happened is very, very annoying and disturbing."

Drover shredded almost all of the medical documents that have been mistakenly faxed to her, in many cases without even reading the details on those documents.

"It's privileged information. I didn't even read it."

She did show CBC News one sheet she had saved — a list of dates and times for a northern patient's appointments at the Cross Cancer Institute.

Dialing error fixed: Alberta Health

A spokesperson for Alberta Health told CBC News on Thursday that it is aware of one fax sent to Drover in error, since the fax number was dialed manually at the time.

The fax number for Stanton Territorial Hospital has since been put on speed dial, so Drover should not be receiving any more faxes from the Cross Cancer Institute, the spokesperson said.

N.W.T. privacy commissioner Elaine Keenan Bengts said she was surprised to hear of Drover's situation because Alberta has strong policies with regard to health information.

"I will be contacting my colleague, Frank Work, who's the information and privacy commissioner in Alberta," Keenan Bengts said Thursday.

"Those documents originate in Alberta, and that's where the problem lies in that case."

Keenan Bengts said it should be standard practice for health-care staff to phone ahead before sending confidential medical information by fax, then call their recipients afterward to make sure the faxes arrived at the intended destination.