Play The Podcast: Episode 7: Navigating the Privacy Landscape of Physiotherapy Practice
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15 December 2019
Jody Prohar, Registrar and Executive Director of the College of Physiotherapists of Alberta and Leanne Loranger, Manager of Policy and Practice discuss the dizzying landscape of privacy legislation for physiotherapists in Alberta.
“Alberta physiotherapists are currently subject to 4 different pieces of privacy legislation... In some practice settings, more than one piece of privacy legislation can apply to patient records. So, when we talk about privacy for Alberta physiotherapists, we have to be thoughtful about the fact that different rules can apply to the same physiotherapist even when they are working at just one practice site.”
Luckily, privacy legislation is founded on several shared principles, so a physiotherapist can take a principles-based approach to privacy and be well on their way to compliance with the rules that are relevant to their practice.
Later in the episode, we discuss some of the common privacy challenges that physiotherapists encounter, such as:
- Only using private information for purposes identified at the time of collection.
- Being attentive to the privacy challenges related to use of personal devices in practice.
We close with a discussion of what would happen if physiotherapists were declared custodians under the Health Information Act, what this would mean in terms of becoming eligible to be an authorized custodian under the Act (hello Netcare access), and the process of becoming an authorized custodian. (Hint: it’s not as simple as you may think.)
