Privacy Statement

About this statement

Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 requires every health care provider who holds patient records to make a written statement available to the public describing how it handles that information. This is ours.

GIM Clinic is operated by Dr. Marcello Schmidt Medicine Professional Corporation. This statement covers everything the clinic does, including the GOALS program — GOALS is part of GIM Clinic, so your information is held by the same clinic and handled the same way whichever service brought you to us.

We are responsible for the information in our care, including when we use an outside service to help us provide it.

Who to contact

If you have a question about your health information, want to see or correct your record, or want to raise a concern, contact our Privacy Officer.

What we collect

We collect what we need to care for you and to meet our legal obligations — and no more. That normally includes:

• your name, contact details, date of birth and health card number
• the referral your family physician or nurse practitioner sends us, and the reason for it
• your medical history, our examination findings, test and imaging results, and the notes we make about your care
• body-composition measurements, if you choose to have a scan
• payment details, if you use a service that OHIP does not cover

If a different piece of information would serve the same purpose, we use that instead. We do not collect information simply because it might be useful later.

How we use and share it

We use your information to provide your care, to communicate with the other clinicians involved in it, to bill OHIP, to take payment for services OHIP does not cover, and to meet obligations the law places on us.

Within your care team we rely on your implied consent — you do not have to authorise each conversation between the people treating you. Because we are a consultation clinic, that includes sending a report back to the clinician who referred you. That is the purpose of the referral, and it is what your referring clinician is waiting for.

Outside your care team, we ask your consent before sharing your information, unless the law requires or permits us to share it without asking.

We do not sell or rent your information, and we never have. We do not use it to market anything to you without your express consent.

Other systems involved in your care

Your information lives in a small number of systems. Two of them are ours; the others are run by companies we work with. Here is which is which, because that is the part worth knowing. We remain accountable for your information in every case.

Your chart

Your record is kept in a secure electronic chart. It is opened only by the people involved in your care and the staff who need it to run the clinic, and each of them signs in under their own account. It is kept in Canada.

Electronic referrals

Most referrals reach us through an electronic referral service used by clinics and hospitals across Ontario. Your referring clinician sends the referral through it; our team reviews it there, and a copy is saved into your chart. We use the same service when we refer you on to another specialist — in that case your consult note and recent results go with the referral. A referral rests in that service rather than passing straight through, and the company that runs it stores information in Canada. Referrals can also arrive and leave by fax.

Body-composition scans

If you choose a scan, the measurement system stores your results on its own platform. Your scan results are held outside Canada — the next section explains it in full.

The GOALS patient portal

If you are enrolled in the GOALS program, the patient portal is ours — it is not another company. The information in it is held by this clinic, on a server in Canada, under the same rules as the rest of your record. Signing in there does not hand your information to anyone else.

AI help with writing notes

Your physician may use an approved AI tool to help draft the note from your visit. It listens during the appointment and produces a draft; your physician reviews, corrects and approves every note before it becomes part of your record. The AI does not make decisions about your care and does not replace your clinician’s judgement.

The rules we hold any such tool to, and which we will not relax:

• No recording of your voice is kept as a file. Where a tool holds audio briefly while it works, that audio is deleted within one business day.
• Your information is never used to train or improve the company’s AI. This is a contractual requirement, not a setting we hope is switched on.
• Drafts and transcripts are deleted within 90 days at the outside, and in practice as soon as your physician has approved the note.
• Processing stays in Canada.

You can say no, and you can change your mind at any time — before, during or after a visit. Your care will not be affected, and your physician will simply write the note the usual way. We ask for your consent separately, on its own form, so the choice is a real one.

You may also ask which notes in your record were drafted with AI help, and ask us to correct anything that is wrong.

This website

This website does not collect health information. It has no forms and no accounts, and nothing you do here reaches your chart.

We count page visits, so we can see which pages people find useful. That means totals only — how many times a page was opened, which site linked you here, and the general region a visit came from. It is not used to identify you, it does not follow you to other websites, and it is never used for advertising.

The location map on our contact section is loaded from another company, and it loads only if you press “Show map”. If you do not press it, nothing on this page is fetched from them.

Some links take you away from this website — to the electronic referral service, or to the GOALS patient portal, which is our own. Those are ordinary links; following one takes you to a separate sign-in, not to a form on this page.

Email, text and telephone

Ordinary email and text messages are not secure. They can be sent to the wrong address, read on a shared or lost device, or seen by someone with access to the same account. Please do not send us personal health information by email, and please do not use email for anything urgent — this website and our inbox are not monitored for medical questions.

We use email and text for appointment reminders, administrative messages, and to let you know a referral has been received. As a rule we do not send medical information that way.

If you ask us to send something by ordinary email, we will. Some people would rather have their results in hand than wait, and that is a legitimate choice to make about your own information. When you ask, we will remind you of the risk first — once — and then do as you have asked. You can change your mind at any time, and it will not affect your care.

If we ever send you a message that is commercial rather than clinical, it will identify us, and it will always carry a way to unsubscribe. You can withdraw that consent at any time without affecting your care.

If this is an emergency, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency department.

How long we keep your record

We keep your medical record for at least ten years from the date of the last entry in it. If you were under 18 at the time of the last entry, we keep it until ten years after you turn 18.

We may keep a record longer where there is a clinical, legal or regulatory reason to. When a record is no longer required, it is destroyed securely so that it cannot be reconstructed.

Your rights

You have the following rights over your health information.

See your record

You may ask in writing to see or receive a copy of your record. We will answer as soon as we can, and no later than 30 days after we receive your request. If we need more time, we may extend that by up to 30 more days — and we will write to you before the first 30 days are up to tell you how long the extension is and why we need it. A fee may apply for copying, and we will give you an estimate before we do the work.

Correct your record

If you believe something in your record is inaccurate or incomplete, you may ask us in writing to correct it. If we refuse, we will tell you why in writing. You may then write a short statement of disagreement, and you can require us to attach it to your record, to pass it on whenever we share the information it relates to, and to make reasonable efforts to send it to anyone we would have told about the correction. You can also complain to the Commissioner.

Restrict what is shared (a “lockbox”)

You may instruct us not to share specific information with other health care providers. We will follow that instruction. We will also tell you honestly what withholding it may mean for your care, so that your decision is an informed one.

Withdraw your consent

Where we rely on your consent — for a body-composition scan, or for commercial messages — you may withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything already done, and it does not affect your access to care.

If something goes wrong

If your health information is stolen or lost, or is used or shared without authority, we will tell you at the first reasonable opportunity, and we will tell you in that notice that you have the right to complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. In some circumstances we are also required to report the incident to the Commissioner.

If we ever use or share your health information in a way this statement does not describe, we will tell you at the first reasonable opportunity and we will record it in your chart.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please raise it with our Privacy Officer — we would like the chance to put it right.

You can also complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario at any time. You do not have to come to us first. A complaint to the Commissioner must be in writing, and time limits apply — generally within one year of the matter coming to your attention. The Commissioner’s office can explain the limits that apply to you.

Changes to this statement

We update this statement whenever our practices change. The version in force is the one published here, and its effective date is shown at the top of this page.