Patient records should belong to patients - G&M article

[Alies Maybee]

We should have access to our own records. And our records are not always easily accessible to other members of our care team. This causes harms to us as patients.

Read this Globe & Mail article Patient records should belong to patients.pdf published May 19, 2025.

Privacy is one end of the scale; sharing is the other. We have tipped the balance almost exclusively to the privacy end and ignored the need to share appropriately.

[Donna Rubenstein]

@Alies-Maybee I was excited to see this covered by the globe and mails editor, features as the main op ed for the day. Our community has been expressing these themes for years - It's wonderful to see the messaging coming from mainstream media this way- it's a general public issue -that impacts all areas of healthcare. This is a good sign ;I look forward to more communication like this - reinforcement and broader outreach (beyond globe readers) to ensure federal /provincial commitment ..

[Chris Johnston]

@Alies-Maybee Absolutely! And there are so many added hurdles for patients trying to access their records. With lots of doctors retiring, leaving or downsizing their practices in BC during and since the pandemic, many choose to place patient records in the hands of commercial data companies.

There seems to be little or no regulation in this area, and the companies seem somewhat predatory. They offer free digital archiving services to primary care doctors, knowing that they can capitalize by charging exorbitant fees for "retrieval" when patients request their records.

Even when records are shared electronically in PDF format, they charge on a per page basis, which can quickly stack up to hundreds of dollars.