Under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA), the complainant made requests to a public hospital for deletions and other changes to her records of personal health information. The complainant alleges that the information she seeks to have removed relates to a doctor’s factually incorrect diagnosis of her. The hospital refused the requests, including on the basis the information at issue consists of professional opinions or observations made in good faith, and thus qualifies for the exception at section 55(9)(b) to the duty to correct in section 55(8) of PHIPA.
After considering the circumstances of the complaint, the adjudicator exercises her discretion not to conduct a review of the matter under PHIPA. Among other reasons, she finds that the hospital has responded adequately to the complaint in the circumstances, and that no useful purpose would be served by reviewing a complaint in which the complainant seeks deletions to her records and other remedies that are not available in PHIPA. She dismisses the complaint.
The adjudicator also addresses as a preliminary matter the complainant’s allegations that the IPC discriminated against her and failed to accommodate her disability in the IPC complaint process. She finds that in the absence of information from the complainant to support an accommodation request, it is reasonable to proceed with her consideration of the complaint.