A high-ranking Veterans’ Affairs official says it’s not appropriate for VAC agents to collect medical data, outside a few very specific circumstances.
Lee Marshall, Veterans’ Affairs Canada’s Acting Director of Corporate Affairs for Field Operations, appeared at the Desmond Fatality Inquiry in Port Hawkesbury Tuesday.
Marshall says VAC agents don’t collect medical data, except on consent of a veteran to be used to apply for specific programs.
“They can technically access service health records, although they’ve been instructed not to because service health records are considered need-to-know, and service health records are not considered need-to-know documents, say, for case managers,” he says. “VAC’s access to personal information is need-to-know, so if we need it, it’s for the determination of a benefit or a service.”
Marshall says VAC and its agents aren’t healthcare providers, they are a healthcare payer on behalf of veterans.
He says it isn’t the place of VAC agents to manage medical data, and because they aren’t healthcare workers, they shouldn’t have access to private health information.
“I would think there would be a lot of risk for sharing of information that VAC doesn’t have a need-to-know, if case managers actually intervened and held onto those documents,” he says. “From a access to information and privacy perspective.”
Marshall says agents collect only as much medical information as is required to do their jobs in order to protect veterans’ privacy.
