Privacy and security have always been important for physicians and our teams, but they aren’t necessarily top of mind for those of us practicing in a community medicine setting because of competing priorities. After the introduction of mandatory breach reporting by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta in 2018, many of us took the opportunity to learn about the general components of this work, including understanding the requirement for a Privacy Impact Assessment and basic security processes.

The pandemic has created many new obstacles for clinics to overcome, especially with how we are managing the traffic within the office. These obstacles have also brought on new obligations including that of contact tracing.

This past year has been unlike anything we in the medical field have ever experienced before. Though many of our practices have had to change in 2020, nothing has been more of an adjustment than the abrupt switch to virtual care. It goes without saying that nothing beats face-to-face patient care, but we have all had to be flexible in how we support our patients.