Patient data found blowing around Grand Falls-Windsor lawn

Central Health is investigating how the private information of 16 patients who had been on a surgical ward of the Grand Falls-Windsor hospital, wound up blowing around the town.

The names, ages and medical conditions of the patients were on paper lost by someone who works with the health authority.

Why is my stuff being thrown around on someone's lawn?- Eric Horwood

CBC Radio producerDavid Newellpicked up the paper blowing on his lawn, assuming that it was litter.

He soon discovered the sheetcontained private health information about patients who had been at the Central Newfoundland Regional Health Centre.

Grand Falls-Windsor resident Eric Horwood, 81, was not pleased to learn that information about him made its way out of the hospital.

"It's not a very nice thing," said Horwood, describing the phone call he received from a Central Health official in Gander.

"There's not much privacy now, is there ... I'm embarrassed, yes, when they told me about that. Why is my stuff being thrown around on someone's lawn?"

'As bulletproof as possible'

Central Health chief executive officerRosemary Goodyearsaid the authority is trying to find out what went wrong.

"[The] speculation would be that what most likely happened here was that this fell out of the person's pocket," she said in an interview Friday.

"But our determination at this point in time is that this was purely an accident and was misplaced. The provider did have legitimate access to it and certainly did not violate policy."

Goodyear said that Central Health began contacting patients after it learned of the incident on Wednesday.

"Health care is a very complex system, and as part of that system there is an ongoing need for information to be shared by providers," shetold the Central Morning Show.

"While we work and put due diligence in place to make that as bulletproof as possible, there are times when inadvertently things will happen, where information will be shared as we haven't planned to share it," she said.

Meanwhile, Central Health's privacy officer called CBC, demanding the return of the document and any copies, explaining the broadcaster should not haveinformation, releasedwithout patient consent.