Confidentiality Guidelines

Employee Well-being is entrusted with personal health information in the course of their work and they have an ethical and legal responsibility to maintain confidentiality. Personal health information includes all information relating to an individual’s physical, psychological and social health. The following guideline has been developed to address issues related to collection, retention, storage, access to and reproduction of personal health information held by Employee Well-being.

  • Employee Well-being staff sign confidentiality agreements and are subject to professional and legal codes of ethics.
  • Employee Well-being has the responsibility to interpret personal health information to supervisors as fitness for work information without divulging confidential medical information.
  • Confidential personal health information will only be disclosed with the signed consent of the individual except where required by law i.e.: circumstances where the individual is assessed to be a danger to themselves or to others. In these circumstances the individual will be notified of the disclosure.
  • Confidential personal health information may be shared within the Employee Well-being team. The Health, Safety & Well-being Coordinator is not considered a part of the Employee Well-being team.
  • Confidential personal health information is maintained in locked files in Employee Well-being with access limited to those individuals involved with the provision of care.
  • Computerized records and voice mails are password protected.
  • Employee Well-being has a separate confidential fax line and all outgoing transmissions include a cover sheet containing a warning to instruct those individuals who receive the information in error to destroy it immediately before reading it.
  • Any trash that contains confidential personal health information will be shredded by Employee Well-being staff.
  • Individuals have a right to access information regarding their health and fitness for work information and to request corrections to be made to their record where they feel that there is an error. Requests must be made in writing.
  • Individuals will be notified at the first reasonable opportunity if their personal health information is lost, stolen or accessed by an unauthorized person.

For further information contact the Western Information and Privacy Office at 519-661-2111 ext. 84543.

Published on  and maintained in Cascade CMS.