OTTAWA -- Ontario's privacy commissioner has launched a preliminary investigation into how several health reports containing patient information ended up blowing down O'Connor St. last week.

"We are launching an investigation today," commission spokesman Bob Spence said yesterday. "A team from here will be gathering information."

Andre Werbrouck found about a dozen reports from CML HealthCare when he arrived at his parking lot attendant job Wednesday morning.

The parking lot is beside the lab at 267 O'Connor St., a building that houses several medical offices.

Some of the documents are receipts, but others are reports with patients' health card numbers, dates of birth and lab results. The reports indicate the types of tests completed on the patients.

Werbrouck said the papers were blowing around after a recycling truck picked up material outside the building that morning. He took it upon himself to collect the documents with the intention of returning them to the lab.

The area operations manager for CML could not be reached yesterday.

SHREDDED

The company has an extensive privacy policy on its website stating, "Hard copies of requisitions and testing (imaging) results are shredded in-house, or by an authorized third party under the terms of a confidentiality agreement."

Last week, a worker at the lab said health reports are usually shredded before they're recycled.

The privacy commissioner was alerted to the incident by the media.

Spence said the commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, immediately contacted the lab when she learned about the possible breach of privacy.

Officials will investigate if the reports contain sensitive patient information and whether there was a breach under the Ontario Personal Health Protection Act.

There is no timeline for the probe.