Privacy
The Trauma Healing Collective is committed to the protection of your privacy. Below, you will find information about our policies and practices regarding your personal health information, how it is protected, and the legal limits to privacy. If you have any questions regarding this information, please contact us.
Defining “Personal Health Information”
Under Ontario privacy law, your “personal health information” is any identifiable information collected in the process of receiving therapeutic services including social work and psychotherapy, under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA - https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/04p03). This includes your name and contact information, as well as any information collected/recorded in the course of providing services to you such as your client record.
Collecting Your Personal Health Information
We collect your personal health information only directly from you, except: a) when you have provided consent to obtain such information from others (e.g., reports of previous assessments or of other services); and b) where the law requires or allows us to collect information without your consent (e.g., in an urgent situation, when information is needed to prevent potential harm).
We only collect information from you that we believe is needed: a) to provide you with the services you have requested and/or for which you have been referred; b) to maintain contact with you for service-related or future consent purposes; c) to prevent or offset harm (e.g., asking for an emergency contact).
By law and in accordance with professional standards, we are required to keep a record of services provided to and contacts with you. Your record includes information you provide or authorize us to receive, results of any assessments, your counselling plan, consent forms, session notes, billing information, and correspondence that we have sent or received related to your services. The electronic records are the property of our practice. However, you have rights regarding access to your record and regarding disclosure of information from your record (see below).
The Trauma Healing Collective maintains a record for each client. The record contains a summary of the facts of each session and is brief in nature. Records are kept via a secure electronic medical records system, Jane, which is compliant with Canadian federal and provincial privacy laws. Your file is created and maintained in accordance with regulations set by the OCSWSSW as well as provincial and federal privacy legislation and the contents are strictly confidential, in accordance with the privacy and confidentiality information outlined previously.
Use of your Personal Health Information
At Trauma Healing Collective, the use of your personal health information is to provide services to you. This includes carrying out all of the functions reasonably necessary to provide those services (e.g., service planning and monitoring, maintaining your record, billing, etc.).
In addition, we may use some information for program evaluation, quality improvement, student/trainee education, and risk/ error management. Anyone who has access to your personal health information are trained in our policies and procedures, including prevention of loss of information and prevention of unauthorized access, and are held to the same legal and regulatory privacy standards. All staff members are allowed to have access to information about you only on a “need-to- know” basis. A staff person who knows you personally is required to disclose this conflict of interest, and is not allowed to have access to your record unless there is an emergency or unless you give consent.
The Trauma Healing Collective is required to be compliant with provincial and federal privacy laws in all uses of your personal health information. We use an electronic medical records system called ‘Jane’ which stores your information securely and in accordance with provincial and federal standards (Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act - PHIPA and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act -PIPEDA).
Disclosure of your Personal Health Information
Anything you share in session or in other modes of communication (phone, text, email) is strictly confidential and cannot be shared without your explicit, written consent, except for specific situations where it is required by law:
1. Where there are reasonable grounds that disclosure is necessary to eliminate or reduce significant, imminent risk of serious bodily harm (includes physical or psychological harm) to you or anyone else, e.g., suicide, homicide. If the therapist believes a significant, imminent risk of serious bodily harm exists (this includes physical or psychological harm), there may be a professional and legal duty to warn the intended victim, to contact relevant authorities, such as the police, or to inform a physician who is involved in the care of the client.
2. Where disclosure is required, under the Child and Family Services Act, 1990, to protect a child/youth, under the age of 16, from reasonable suspect of physical or psychological harm, neglect, or sexual abuse by a person having charge of the child/youth.
3. If disclosure is necessary for legal proceedings such as if your therapist is subpoenaed or otherwise legally required (e.g. warrant or provincial/federal law such as the Missing Person’s Act, 2018) to provide information and/or your clinical record.
4. For the purpose of contacting the emergency contact or potential substitute decision-maker of the individual, if the individual is injured, incapacitated or ill and unable to give consent personally.
5. To a regulatory college (e.g., OCSWSSW) for the purpose any investigation, administrative requirements, and/or mandatory reporting (e.g., providing information about you to the Regulating College if a complaint has been made against the therapist; mandatory reporting where the therapist’s client is a regulated health professional and the therapist has reasonable grounds to believe that the client has sexually abused a patient/client).
In order to provide the best care for you, our therapists attend individual and group clinical supervision on a regular basis. This involves a therapist bringing details of their case to other therapists and specialists to review the case and provide feedback or advice. Your therapist only provides the necessary details to engage in supervision and does not reveal your identity. Anyone who engages in clinical supervision is held to the same confidentiality standards outlined in this form
Your Right to Access Your Personal Health Information Record
With only a few expectations, you have the right to access any record of your personal health information, and to request copies of the information. If you believe that the information in your record is not accurate, you may make a written request to correct your record. If we do not agree that we have made an error, you may provide a notice of disagreement that will be included in the file and we will forward that notice to anyone else who received the earlier information.
Your electronic record is maintained for 10 years, after the last dated session for adults, and for 10 years after a child’s 18th birthday for child/youth clients.
If you wish to access your personal records, please inform your therapist or contact us at the information provided on our contact page. All requests to review or receive all or part of your file, will be responded to within 10 business days. We may need to confirm your identity, if you have not received service for some time, before providing you with this access. If we cannot give you access, we will inform you in a timely manner and explain why not.
Further Information
For more general inquiries or to make a complaint, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario oversees the administration of privacy legislation in the private sector. The Commissioner can be reached at:
80 Bloor Street West, Suite 1700
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2V1
Phone (416) 326-3333
Web: www.ipc.on.ca
E-mail: commissioner@ipc.on.ca