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This investigation was initiated as a result of a complaint concerning the Health Disciplines Board (the Board). The complainant had complained about the conduct of ten doctors at a hospital to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (the College). The College's complaints committee made a disposition of her complaint against the doctors, but she was not satisfied with the College's decision, so she requested that the Board review it.
The Board is established under section 6(1) of the Health Disciplines Act. When a request is made for a review, the Board's role is to review the College's decision. The Board may confirm the decision of the complaints committee, make recommendations to the complaints committee, or require the complaints committee to take action or proceedings.
When the complainant wrote to the Board, asking for the College's decision to be reviewed, she also made the following request: "I would like to have full disclosure of all data considered by the College and also information from the Investigator to justify their conclusion."
When the Board receives a request for disclosure from the complainant or the member being complained about, its practice is to ask the other parties to the complaint if they object to the disclosure. In this case, there was no objection from the doctors, provided that they, too, received the same documents as the complainant. Accordingly, the Board released a package of approximately 200 documents to the complainant, as well as to the doctors' agent.
The package included copies of the complainant's correspondence to and from the doctors she had complained about, as well as a letter from the complainant to a Chief of Police, which included information relating to complaints about two of the doctors, information relating to her complaints about police officers, and other information not related to either of these matters. The package also contained a letter from the Police Complaints Commissioner to the College concerning the complaints about the doctors, a letter from the Police Complaints Commissioner to a Deputy Chief of Police advising him that the complaint letter had been forwarded to the College, and excerpts from the complainant's medical records.
The Board's review was held in the form of a meeting. The complainant, the Board members, eight of the doctors complained about, their agent who was representing them, a representative of the College, and the Board's clerical assistant, who took notes for the Board, attended the review.
The complainant noted that each individual at the review appeared to have a file containing copies of the same documents that the Board had provided to her. She was concerned that her personal letters to the doctors had been copied and placed in this file in a way that revealed her name, address, and state of health.
She believed that the disclosure of these documents in the file to the doctors and their agent (i.e their lawyer) breached her privacy, and that her personal health record might have been subsequently used by the doctors and their agent. The complainant was the first person to leave the review room, and therefore, was unable to determine what had happened to the copies of the file that the Board had used during the review.
She stated that she had not expected anyone except the Registrar of the Board and herself to attend the review. She believed that "outsiders" had attended the review, and that disclosure to these individuals breached the privacy provisions of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act).
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