Policies

Collecting your Personal Health Information and/or Personal Information is necessary for the following purposes:

• Providing you with assessments, counselling, treatment, referral and/or consultation services.
• Consulting with other professionals in your circle of care about your care.
• Establishing and maintaining communication with you.
• Establishing and maintaining communication, including receiving and disclosing information, with third parties for which we have received written consent from you.
• Making referral appointments for you.
• Complying with legal and/or professional requirements for information gathering.
• Compiling information and statistics for internal use, or as aggregate data in research projects approved by the relevant ethics boards, as appropriate or as required by law. 
• Compiling information for internal use (e.g., statistical summaries for annual reports or for third parties with whom you have agreed to the disclosure of information.)

Within Your Circle of Care

To enable the best care, your Personal Health Information and/or Personal Information may be shared within your circle of care. Your “circle of care” includes the professionals involved in providing your care. For example, that may include the physician, psychologist, and counsellor you see through Student Wellbeing. Your information may be shared between, and accessible by, the professionals within your circle of circle for the purposes outlined previously, including to provide you care and ensure continuity of care. Student Wellbeing has an audit process in place, including technological protections, to ensure that information shared within your circle of care is only accessed for valid purposes. If you have concerns about your Personal Health Information and/or Personal Information being shared within your circle of care, please discuss your concerns with Student Wellbeing or your healthcare professional.

Outside of Your Circle of Care

Except in the exceptional circumstances outlined below, Student Wellbeing will not disclose your Personal Health Information and/or Personal Information outside of your circle of care without your consent and direction. If you request for Student Wellbeing to share your information with a third-party, you will be required to sign a consent form to authorize the release of the information. A fee for copies may apply. 

Exceptional Circumstances

However, there are certain exceptional circumstances, required by law, where Student Wellbeing may need to disclose your information without your consent. These special circumstances include:

1. If you intend to harm yourself.
2. If you intend to harm another person.
3. If you or your counsellor has a strong reason to think that a Toronto Metropolitan University Community member may be at risk of harm based on information that you provided in your session.
4. If there is a reasonable suspicion that a child (under the age of 18) is at risk of emotional and/or physical neglect or emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse. For children under the age of 16, we are required by law to report this to the Children’s Aid Society immediately.
5. If you are involved in a court case and the judge thinks that counselling is relevant to the case, your file might be subpoenaed.
6. If you have a complaint about a regulated health professional (e.g., doctor, nurse, psychologist, chiropractor,  massage therapist, etc.) with respect to their inappropriate sexual behaviour towards you, and you provide us with that individual’s name, we are required to report this complaint to their regulatory body.

Information is stored securely within an Electronic Medical Record (“EMR”). Additional safeguards include two-factor authentication, etc. The EMR also includes technological protections and audit trails and activity logging to mitigate inappropriate access. While users may have the ability to access the EMRs of various clients, they are only permitted to do so with a valid purpose, as outlined above. 

To ensure that PHI is only accessed for valid purposes, the Executive Director, Student Wellbeing, is responsible for conducting regular and random audits of EHR activities and access. Regular audits will be conducted, at minimum, on a quarterly basis. At his or her discretion, the Executive Director, Student Wellbeing, may also conduct random and/or more frequent audits, such as in response to a privacy complaint or any other identified incident. 

The Electronic Medical Record (“EMR”) is retained for ten (10) years after the client’s last interaction with Student Wellbeing.  If a client is under the age of 18 years old at the time of collection, the 10 year retention period begins when the client turns 18. When the EMR reaches its retention period, it will be purged from the system. Student Wellbeing may retain the EMR for a longer period, if necessary.  Clients may request their records be transferred prior to the expiry of the retention period. 

Yes, it is your right to access, or seek to correct, your Personal Health Information and/or Personal Information, in accordance with the applicable legislation, such as PHIPA or FIPPA.  You may be asked to verify your identity and a fee may apply for copies. 

You also have a right to withdraw your consent for Student Wellbeing to use and disclose your Personal Health Information and/or Personal Information. You will be asked to complete a form outlining your withdrawal of consent. This cannot be applied retroactively. 

To do so, please contact:

Administrative Coordinator
Student Wellbeing
Toronto Metropolitan University
350 Victoria Street
Toronto, ON  M5B 2K3
(416) 979-5000 ext. 6652

You have the right to challenge Student Wellbeing's compliance with its Statement of Confidentiality and Privacy. 

To do so, please contact:

Executive Director
Student Wellbeing
Toronto Metropolitan University
350 Victoria Street
Toronto, ON  M5B 2K3
(416) 979-5000 ext. 2286

When you challenge compliance, Student Wellbeing will investigate your concern. If the complaint is determined to be well-founded, Student Wellbeing will inform you and remediate the issue. If the complaint is determined to be not well-founded, Student Health and Wellness will explain why. 

If you are not satisfied with the response of Student Wellbeing, you may escalate your concern to the University Privacy Officer:

University Privacy Officer
Office of the General Counsel and Board Secretariat
Toronto Metropolitan University
350 Victoria Street
Toronto, ON  M5B 2K3
fippa@torontomu.ca

If you are still not satisfied with the response of the University Privacy Officer, you may contact the Information and Privacy Commissioner:

Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario
2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400
Toronto, ON  M4W 1A8
416-326-3333 or 1-800-387-0073
info@ipc.on.ca

• Pages <5  $25
• Each additional page $0.50

• Medical certificate/Sick note or Back to work note $20
• Pre-Employment/Volunteer form $30
• Attending Physician Statement up to  $150
• Academic Accommodation Form/Disability Assessment Form $50
• Uninsured Medical Examination and Form up to $230
• Driver’s Medical Examination and Form $60
• Detailed form not listed    (Physician hourly billing rate)

<10 pages $5

• Minor visit (< 20 minutes)  $35
• Intermediate visit (20 minutes) $65
• Periodic Health Exam Part 1  $65
• Periodic Health Exam Part 2 $80
• Initial Mental Health Assessment $130

• Initial Psychiatric Assessment $150
• Psychiatric follow up $100

• $30 (Physician approval required)

• Test and serum $57
• Read $20 
• Comprehensive Immunization Form $30

• $30 per treatment

$30 per treatment 

• Gardasil 9 $181/dose

• Office fee $53
• Lab fee (billed directly to patient by lab) $50 

Now with your consent, Toronto Metropolitan University counsellors and physicians involved in your care will see your entire health record. Previous to this merger, counsellors working in the Centre for Student Development and Counselling (CSDC) could not access your health record in the Medical Centre, nor could physicians in the Medical Centre access your health record in the CSDC. With a merged health record your healthcare providers will be able to enhance coordination of your healthcare needs and experience.

Only Toronto Metropolitan University health professionals involved in your care or administrative staff who are required to access your record for specific reasons (ie: schedule an appointment, transfer a record with your consent, etc.) are permitted to access your record. The Student Wellbeing department has policies in place to optimize health information privacy including a regular audit to monitor who is accessing what health record.  For further information, review the Student Wellbeing Statement of Confidentiality and Privacy Principles is linked below if you would like further information on how we collect, use and disclose your health information.

The process to access your own health information remains the same. Please contact either the Medical Centre or the CSDC and they will walk you through the process. 

With your consent, it will now be the regular practice to have your health record available to all of Toronto Metropolitan University health professionals involved in your care. All of our Toronto Metropolitan health professional team members are members of regulatory colleges and bound to confidentiality standards and will not share your personal health information without your consent. There are multiple reasons why this could be of benefit to your care: decreased need to re-tell your story, faster access to updated health information for all Toronto Metropolitan health professionals involved in your care, increased ability for those involved in your care to collaborate, etc. However, there is a “lockbox” option available in those rare instances where a client does not want their health information shared with other health professionals involved in their care. Please see your health care provider to discuss and address any concerns.

In order for your healthcare providers (i.e. counsellor and physician) to access your new integrated health record, we require your expressed consent and you will be asked to sign the following at your appointment.

Acknowledgment of the Statement of Confidentiality and Privacy 

By signing below, I acknowledge and confirm:

• I have reviewed the Statement of Confidentiality and Privacy of Student Health and Wellness (last modified in April 2019); 
• I understand how Student Health and Wellness collects, uses, and discloses my Personal Health Information; 
• I have been offered a copy of the Statement of Confidentiality and Privacy; and,
• I am satisfied that Statement of Confidentiality and Privacy has been explained to me and that I have had the opportunity to have any questions answered.