Ontario doctor fined for breaching privacy rules to offer circumcision services

Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner has ordered a Windsor doctor and his private clinic to pay thousands of dollars in fines for privacy breaches in a case she calls a “cautionary tale” for other health startups.

Commissioner Patricia Kosseim wrote in a recent decision that a doctor with privileges at Windsor Regional Hospital used his electronic health record access there to look for parents of newborn boys and contact them to offer circumcisions at a clinic he partly owns.