Toronto doctor suspended after texting medical information to patient's ex-husband, daughter
CTV
A Toronto doctor has been barred from practicing until August after she was found to have sent private medical information to a patient’s former spouse, friends, and daughter over text and Facebook Messenger.
A Toronto doctor has been barred from practicing until August after she was found to have sent private medical information to a patient’s former spouse, friends, and daughter over text and Facebook Messenger.
Dr. Elika Safar Zadeh, an endocrinologist at North York General Hospital, has been suspended from practicing for five months, from March 20 to August 20, after admitting to engaging in professional misconduct by sharing a patient’s medical records on multiple occasions with their family and friends, a March finding published by the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal (OPSDT) shows.
The ruling cites an incident in which Safar Zadeh admitted she engaged in professional misconduct after sharing a patient’s medical records three times – in January and April 2019 – with their family and friends.
The ruling says the patient involved, a woman referred to as Patient A, was treated for the “first and only time” by Safar Zadeh in 2015. After being admitted, Patient A received mental health care, it said.
Four years later, in 2019, Safar Zadeh had ceased to have a doctor-patient relationship with the patient, but had engaged in a relationship with her former husband, who is also a physician, the tribunal found.
Safar Zadeh then accessed the medical records of her former patient without her consent, stating that the woman “had been harassing and threatening her” and she needed to reference past care in case of incoming legal action, a summary of the complaint, initially issued to the College of Surgeons and Physicians of Ontario’s Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee reads.
She then however took photographs of the records and texted them to the woman’s ex-husband – in what the committee found to be “a serious breach of professional obligations [...] done mainly for personal gain.”
