B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal has rejected a woman’s claim for $5,000 after irrelevant medical records were sent to WorkSafeBC by her clinic.
Tribunal member Micah Carmody said in a Jan. 24 decision Tiffany Spencer was a patient at Vancouver’s Broadway Station Medical Clinic.
She had injured her right foot and made a claim with WorkSafe BC.
With Spencer’s authorization, WorkSafe requested from the clinic all available chart notes for treatment of Spencer’s feet from January 2022 to August 2023.
The clinic sent WorkSafe all Spencer’s chart notes, which included the relevant page of notes, plus four pages that were undisputedly irrelevant and beyond WorkSafe’s request, Carmody said.
“Ms. Spencer says this has been a tremendously humiliating experience,” Carmody said.
Spencer claimed the amount as a penalty for the clinic’s disclosure of her records.
“I find she really seeks compensation for intangible losses,” Carmody said.
Still, the clinic said an office assistant made an honest mistake, that it mitigated the damages by asking WorkSafe to destroy the records and that it self-reported the incident to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
Further, the clinic said it reinforced its records disclosure policy with staff and it apologized to Spencer.
“The clinic says I should therefore dismiss the claim,” Carmody said.
Carmody said that to succeed in negligence claim Spencer needed to show how the clinic or one of its employees owed her a duty of care, that it breached the applicable standard of care, and that she experienced a loss or damage caused by the breach.
However, Carmody said, “the law distinguishes between psychological disturbance that rises to the level of personal injury and psychological upset that does not amount to injury and therefore is not compensable.”
Carmody said agitation, anxiety and other mental states that fall short of injury are generally not compensable.
“There is no objective evidence, such as medical reports,” Carmody said. “The evidence is that only one WorkSafeemployee viewed the records, and they immediately redacted the sensitive information. I find the impact was relatively limited.”
As such, Carmody said the evidence overall fell short of showing the type of serious or prolonged harm that is compensable.
“For that reason, I dismiss Ms. Spencer’s negligence claim,” Carmody said.
