A Saanich man says Island Health has been mixing up his health records for the past three years and it’s putting his life at risk.
Dave Rogers says despite repeated attempts to fix the problem, the health authority continues to confuse his name and his private health records with another man with the same name.
“Somebody has my personal medical records and apparently I don’t,” Rogers said.
The retired firefighter says the problem started in 2014 when he was tested for respiratory problems at Victoria General Hospital.
The affliction flared up again in 2015, but Roger’s tests were nowhere to be found.
“It’s very disconcerting, I have no trust in VIHA or the health system right now,” Rogers said.
Vancouver Island Health Authority apologized in a letter and called it a “data remediation” problem, not a privacy breach.
The health authority noted it was taking the appropriate steps to ensure the mistakes in the Electronic Health Record were rectified.
But Rogers says when he was rushed to the ER last week he faced the same issue, his doctors thought he was a different man with the same name.
“Are they going to be treating him with the other David Rogers' conditions in mind or his own?” Roger’s wife, Rebecca, said. “I mean he could be getting wrong medication, wrong procedures.”
This isn’t Island Health’s first privacy breach.
In the past two years it’s faced at least four privacy breaches involving roughly 400 people.
B.C.’s privacy watch dog tells CTV News it could be a case it looks at.
“We encourage every organization to ensure when they’re dealing with individuals that they have the proper processes and procedures in place to verify and authenticate the identity of individuals,” BC Information and Privacy Commissioner Drew McArthur said.
With files from CTV Vancouver Island's Scott Cunningham
