Over 2000 privacy breaches at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton since 2018

There have been more than 2,000 privacy breaches at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton since 2018.

One staff member had accessed 49 different patient files. One of those files belonged to the deceased mother of a Calgary man, Arthur Gallant, who is now taking the organization to court.

Former Hamilton resident Arthur Gallant learned in January that his deceased mother, Marilyn Gallant’s hospital records at St. Joseph’s Healthcare had been breached. Since then he’s been fighting for answers and compensation. “A donation or any sort of form of compensation won’t bring my mom back, but it will allow me to feel as if this breach was sort of not for nothing,” Gallant said.

Arthur said he is asking for a total of $5,000. He said much of that will be given to a charity that takes disabled kids to Blue Jays games. He said he will use the rest of the money so he can travel to Pittsburgh where his mother passed.

Arthur and his mother were on a road trip to see her beloved Blue Jays and to see Cher in concert. Marilyn suffered heart failure hours before the game and was hospitalized during both the game and the concert. Arthur still went to both and said his mother would have wanted him to.

St. Joseph’s Healthcare acknowledged 2,183 breaches in a statement to CHCH News but says 93% of those, or 2025, are from misdirected faxes to family doctors. St. Joe’s sends out more than a million faxes each year.

The staff member who accessed Marilyn Gallant’s file and 48 others out of curiosity was fired in March, along with 3 other staff members previously let go between 2018 and 2020 who also looked at files they shouldn’t have.