N.W.T Government Is Facing a Health Privacy Breach Lawsuit

The Northwest Territories government is facing a lawsuit over health privacy breaches that span a decade. A N.W.T man may soon be joining in on the health privacy lawsuit after he received notice that his blood test results and other private information were “inadvertently faxed” to the wrong department.

Andy Kudlak of Paulatuk, N.W.T. says he received a letter from the territorial government, which he thought might contain the results of his blood test. Instead, he says the letter informed him about a privacy breach in which a third-party contractor faxed his private medical information from DynaLIFE Medical Labs to the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.

This health privacy breach reportedly occurred on Nov. 9, 2019. DynaLife Medical Labs provides diagnostic lab services, and Alberta Health Services is the third-party contractor that faxed Kudlak’s blood test results to the wrong department.

Less than a week before the alleged breach of Kudlak’s health data, Alberta Health Services reportedly migrated its provincial electronic information system to a province-wide laboratory information system that is used to transmit lab test results.

During the migration, lab test results were arriving inconsistently so Alberta Health Services began faxing results instead. However, some of the fax numbers were incorrect.

The Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority reported Kudlak’s privacy breach to the territory’s privacy commissioner, as required under the Health Information Act.

The law firm Cooper Regel is currently working on a representative action, which is similar to a class action lawsuit, to cover the health privacy breach complaints. According to lawyer Steven Cooper, the number of known health privacy breaches is likely just the “proverbial tip of the iceberg.”

The health privacy breach class action lawsuit will seek significant punitive damages, Cooper says.

Kudlak is far from the only person to have his private health information faxed to the wrong recipient, according to CBC News.

The data breach class action lawsuit filed by Cooper Regel reportedly covers several health data breaches that have occurred in the Northwest Territories over the last decade.

One massive data breach involved the theft of a laptop that reportedly contained the health data for about 80 percent of the residents of the Northwest Territories.

Another data breach reportedly involved the discovery of hundreds of confidential documents located in a banker’s box at the Fort Simpson dump in December 2018. These documents allegedly contained sensitive information about patients’ mental health, drug use, notes from counselling and applications for treatment.

Cooper says that the Northwest Territories government, “as the keeper of the sacred information, is only going to take notice when punitive damages are in the millions, because it’s going to hurt them.”

Cooper Regel is compiling complaints for the data breach lawsuit, which has not yet been certified.

In addition to punitive damages, the health data breach lawsuit seeks compensation for those affected so they can pay for credit monitoring to protect themselves from identity theft, fraud, and credit damage.

Meanwhile, N.W.T. privacy commissioner Elaine Keegan Bengts claims that the government continues to fax private health information despite her pleas for it to stop.

“We continue to receive breach notifications which involve misdirected faxes on a weekly basis,” she says.

Has your private health information been faxed to the wrong department? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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