Medical fax freeze imposed in N.W.T.

Health-care centres across the Northwest Territories have been ordered not to fax any private medical documents for the time being, after patient files were recently faxed to the CBC by mistake.

Four sets of confidential patient files have been faxed to the CBC's newsroom in Yellowknife over the past two months, with the most recent documents received earlier this week.

In all four cases, health officials have blamed human error — fax numbers being misdialled — for the documents ending up on the CBC's fax machine.

As a result, the N.W.T. Health Department imposed a temporary faxing freeze across the territory, barring health-care staff from sending out confidential medical files by fax at least until Friday.

"We needed to take extraordinary measures to make sure that everybody in the front line understands that we take this issue seriously, and that they do their part … to make sure that there's a lot less possibly of human error," Health Minister Sandy Lee told CBC News on Thursday.

In the most recent incident, private patient files were sent Monday by the Stanton Territorial Health Authority, which is in charge of the territory's main hospital in Yellowknife.

When the fax error was revealed, hospital CEO Kay Lewis imposed a freeze on confidential medical faxes being sent, only allowing Stanton staff to send such faxes in emergency cases, and only with two staff members present as the fax is being sent.

"Staff are terrified," Lewis said. "In terms of faxing and that sort of thing, they're just afraid it's going to happen to them."

The Health Department is scheduled to hold a conference call Friday at 9 a.m. MT with the heads of all regional health authorities, in which they will decide whether to lift the faxing freeze.