An Ontario hospital has fired a nurse who was found to have been improperly accessing the protected health information of some 1,300 patients for more than nine years. 

 

The 106-bed Norfolk General Hospital dismissed the employee in March after receiving a call from a former patient who expressed concern that their protected health information was known in the community. The individual was "basically hearing from other neighbors and friends and people in the community things that would be on their medical file," said NGH spokesperson Janine Van Den Heuvel to Healthcare IT News. 

 

[See also: Six fired for keeping up with Kardashian.]

 

Following an investigation, hospital officials discovered the nurse had violated Canada's Personal Information Protection Act by accessing patients' electronic medical records on several occasions dating as far back as 2004. "We don't know why she was accessing the files inappropriately," said Van Den Heuvel, but that information will be released upon the conclusion of the arbitration process.

 

The information accessed included patient names, dates of birth, phone numbers, health card numbers, physician, next of kin and clinical reason for visit. 

 

[See also: 10 largest HIPAA breaches of 2012.]

 

"We sincerely apologize for this occurrence and for any concerns this may cause," reads an Aug. 12 NGH notice.

 

The hospital has increased the number of random audits on multiple users, according to hospital officials. "We have conducted random audits on 15 users over the past three weeks. We will be looking at other ways we can improve our auditing," the notice read. 

 

Patients were notified of the breach Aug. 8.