Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guidelines for Professional Regulatory Bodies. Updated February 2024. 8 that professional regulatory bodies and their legal counsel carefully review the evidence submitted and redact or de-identify personal health information as much as possible. Such redactions or de-identification may have to be done with the member’s legal counsel’s consent. If personal health information must remain in the exhibits, then the professional regulatory body should get an undertaking from the member’s legal counsel that the personal health information will not be disclosed by them. Open Court Principle The open court principle provides that the courts should be open to public scrutiny to ensure the proper administration of justice. There are cases, though, where openness is limited to protect the privacy, including publication bans which protect complainants, victims and/or witnesses. In Patient 0518 v RHA 0518, 2016 SKQB 175, the Court of Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan noted that the open court principle is not absolute. There are circumstances in which public access to legal proceedings should be restricted. Applying the open court principle to a discipline committee is fine in relation to the public having access to the hearing but that does not necessarily mean that all personal health information needs to be distributed to the public or made available on a website. Courts are not subject to access and privacy laws. However, the professional regulatory bodies may be a government institution under FOIP or a trustee under HIPA. Therefore, they must only collect, use and/or disclose personal health information according to FOIP or HIPA. Professional regulatory bodies may choose to abide by the open court principle (which is laudable) but they have no choice but to also abide by the applicable access and privacy law. Publishing Discipline Related Documents Before publishing discipline related documents on the internet, professional regulatory bodies must: 1) Determine if de-identified information will still accomplish its purpose in publishing the discipline related documents. For example, the professional regulatory body should consider de-identifying witnesses, affected individuals and complainants’ personal information. Publishing such personal information may deter individuals in the future from bringing forth concerns to the professional regulatory body.
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