The files, including patient names and medicare numbers, were being transferred from New Brunswick to British Columbia under a reciprocal billing agreement for residents of one province who use the health system of another.
The tapes have never been found and the information wasn’t protected by encryption.
In one of two reports released concurrently, New Brunswick ombudsman Bernard Richard said the provincial Health Department failed to ensure the information was protected.
“I’m satisfied, however, that the department has taken proper steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.
David Loukidelis, B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner, also released his report into the incident.
“B.C.’s Health Ministry should not have been couriering around unprotected tapes of personal health information like this,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that the tapes can only be read using technology that’s not commonly available.
“Proper encryption is the basic standard for portable data storage like this.” (link)
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