Don’t have a copy of your medical record? You’re not alone. Health experts say it should be an election issue – CBC

Canada was close to legislating health care records access — until Parliament was prorogued

Apr 25, 2025

When a cyberattack took multiple hospitals in southwestern Ontario offline for weeks, Kale McMurren’s cancer treatment had to move to another health-care centre two hours away.

The October 2023 attack meant that McMurren’s digital health records through Windsor Regional Hospital were unreachable. In order to get his medical history to the hospital in London where he was being transferred, McMurren says hard copy files were faxed over.

If McMurren had his own copy, he could have brought the files himself to London.

“I agree that having [my] medical records would help me in [that] situation,” he said.

At the time, the five hospitals targeted in the cyberattack told hundreds of thousands of patients that with systems down, doctors might not have past records or medical history, a person’s current list of medications or reports from other clinicians involved in their treatment.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/medical-records-canada-legislation-election-1.7518119