EDMONTON — Alberta’s privacy commissioner says a doctor in a Covenant Health hospital emergency room peeked at electronic health records of his girlfriend nurse’s ex-husband and people close to him.
After the nurse’s lawyer asked the ex-husband during divorce proceedings about a personal medical issue, the man asked for a log of those who had accessed his records.
They found 12 doctors’ names, none of which sounded familiar to the ex-husband.
Further investigation revealed the nurse’s new boyfriend, a doctor, had used other people’s computer accounts which had been open in the busy ER to check out the records.
The doctor says the nurse was not aware of him doing it, adding it was not uncommon for computers to be left logged on by a number of busy physicians.
Privacy Commissioner Frank Work rapped the knuckles of Covenant Health, a Catholic health-care organization that operates several facilities in the province.