Ontario’s largest hospital network investigating electronic health record error
TORONTO — A clinical team will investigate whether the care of any patient at Ontario’s largest hospital network was impacted by errors reported in its electronic medical records, says a spokeswoman.
Gillian Howard said that while the University Health Network is conducting a review of five million electronic health records gathered over the past five years, a clinical team will also review the files of patients directly impacted by the privacy breach to ensure their care was not compromised.
“I wouldn’t want people to be unnecessarily concerned,” she said. “We are dealing with this, we’ve cleaned our in-house data and are going to be working through all of the places outside. The assurance that people should have is that their own (family doctor) would be looking at any of these things and would likely pick up anything that’s an error. The incidence is very small compared to the number of records.”
The network, which consists of Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital and a number of rehabilitation sites, said that it has also temporarily disconnected its patient record system from Ontario’s electronic health records database while it investigates the error. Howard could not immediately say how long the review would take or when it would be reconnected to the broader system.