What happens when a patient has a communicable disease?
In the event of a confirmed communicable disease exposure on your unit or facility, the Infection Control department will contact the Provincial Workplace Health Contact Centre. They will provide notification of the event and collaborate with the Communicable Disease Exposure Management Nurses, Public Health and/or Medical Health Officers to manage the exposure.
How will I know If I need to take action?
If follow up is needed for employees, the managers of the affected departments will be notified by the Provincial Workplace Health Contact Centre. If a communicable disease exposure occurred on your unit:
- You will be sent a password protected notification email with the details regarding the exposure criteria for your employees. Due to confidentiality, the password, as well as the name and date of birth or the source person, will be provided over the phone to you.
- You will be asked to notify your employees that may meet the exposure criteria outlined in the email and to have these employees contact the Provincial Workplace Health Contact Centre.
For certain communicable diseases, there are prophylactic treatments that can be given to exposed employees. Often times, these prophylactic treatments can only be given within a certain time frame from the date of exposure. Therefore, you may be asked to notify exposed employees to contact us as soon as possible after an exposure.
In some cases recommendations for exposed employees need to be determined by the Medical Health Officer for the health authority prior to initiating contact with a department to provide direction on management of the exposure.
For inquiries or questions, please contact the Communicable Disease Exposure Management Nurse at 1-866-922-9464 (select Option 1) or email OHN@WHCallCentre.ca.
PRIVACY NOTICE:
Collection, Use and Disclosure of Personal Information by Workplace Health to support the COVID-19 Pandemic Response
On September 13, 2021, the Provincial Health Officer announced a program of mandatory vaccination for health authority employed health care workers (HCWs). A similar Order was issued for Long Term Care and Assisted Living workers on September 2, 2021.
The purpose of this notice is to provide you with information about the plans for the collection and use of vaccination status information about HCWs and medical staff working for the Health Authorities of BC and Providence Health Care to ensure compliance with these vaccination requirements and to ensure that we provide employees, staff and patients with a safe and healthy environment.
COVID-19 Vaccination Status Information of HCWs is collected, used and disclosed by the Provincial Workplace Health Call Centre, the Health Authorities of BC and Provindence Health Care for the purposes of complying with public health orders and requirements, to ensure that employees are provided with a safe and healthy workplace, to manage the employment relationship, and to enable public health surveillance and health sector planning. Vaccination status information may also be aggregated and used to assess broader public health and health sector planning needs.
Vaccination status information will continue to be maintained in a secure information system known as the Workplace Health Indicator Tracking and Evaluation (WHITE) system, which has been in existence for many years and is specifically designed to maintain workplace health and safety information. Only authorized users of the WHITE system will have access to your vaccination status information, and such access will take place only on a "need to know" basis and for authorized purposes. Users of WHITE do not have access to your personal health number or vaccination related health records. The system will only provide information verifying whether or not you have been vaccinated.
Vaccination status information is collected in reliance on the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), sections 26(a),(c), (e), 27(1)(a)(iii), 27(1)(f) and 27(1)(b), the Public Health Act, and the E-Health (Personal Health Information Access and Protection of Privacy) Act.
If you have any questions regarding this privacy notification, including the collection, use or disclosure of personal information, please contact:
Roxanna Dehghan, Director Privacy Governance and Operations
Provincial Health Services Authority
200-1333 West Broadway Vancouver BC V6H 4C1
Phone: 1-855-229-9800
Email: privacyphsa@phsa.ca
Vaccination Status FAQ's.pdf
