Rexall hands out patient’s confidential health records to wrong person

By Cristina Howorun

When Maureen Pittman picked up her prescription from a Mississauga Rexall, she didn’t expect to be bringing home another patient’s entire confidential medication history.

“I freaked out. I couldn’t believe it,” she said after realizing the information she mistakenly received.

“I felt so bad for the person this belongs to because its none of my business,” Pittman says while clutching the patient’s records. “There’s six pages of stuff this person has been taking for years, and its in my hands and it shouldn’t be.”

The medication history contains the patient’s name, address, phone number, Ontario Health Insurance number, what medications were prescribed and what they are generally used for. Once Pittman realized the error, she called the Dixie and Dundas area pharmacy.

She says pharmacy said that they very nonchalently, casually, passed it off.

Pittman, was still outraged and decided to call Rexall’s customer service line the next morning and now, five days later, she hasn’t heard back from them.

“I’m shocked to be honest with you,” she says. “When I left my number on Friday, I thought they would call me regardless of the timme; be it Saturday, Sunday even at night. I expressed how important this was for me and how floored I was by this… and nothing.”

She also called the patient and alerted him to the privacy breach.

CityNews spoke with a pharmacist working at the Rexall location today who identified himself as the manager. He said the patient who’s information was shared came into the store on Friday night after receiving a call from Pittman. The pharmacist said they explained the “error” and have spoken with staff about being “more vigilant” when handing out confidential information.

“Each pharmacy in Ontario has a Designated Manager (DM) who is responsible for ensuring the pharmacy has the appropriate safeguards in place so that an incident like this one doesn’t happen,” explains Jasmine Graham of the Ontario College of Pharmacists. “We expect DMs and pharmacy professionals to take steps to protect a patient’s personal health information against theft, loss and unauthorized use and disclosure.”

Calls to the patient were not immediately returned, but Pittman plans to file a complaint with the College about the incident.

“You trust Rexall to keep your information confidential,” she said. “This is definitely a breach of privacy as far as I’m concerned,” Pittmann explains.

“If you can’t trust Rexall with this information, who do you trust?”

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