There has been a data breach involving Ontario Health atHome involving the personal health information of at least 200,000 patients.
Liberal health critic Dr. Adil Shamji says the breach occurred around March 17, 2025, but no details of the incident have been made public for the last three and a half months. He did not reveal how he learned about the alleged breach.
Ontario Health atHome is responsible for co-ordinating in-home and community-based care.
Minister of Health Sylvia Jones confirmed on Friday during an unrelated press conference that Ontario Health is investigating the cyber breach, which she says involved a third-party vendor.
“The investigation is ongoing as we speak,” said Jones when asked if any patient information has been compromised.
Premier Doug Ford also refused to provide further details, citing the ongoing investigation. He did say that they “caught the person” responsible for the breach.
“Any health records is sacred in Ontario,” Ford said, adding the matter is personal to him, after his and his brother Rob Ford’s medical information was breached in 2014. “Anyone who breaches health-care records needs to be fired immediately, gone, be charged, that’s what needs to happen here.”
Shamji says he wrote to the Information and Privacy Commissioner on June 20, asking if they were aware of the breach and calling for an investigation. He says one week later, there is still no clarity as to the scope of the breach, whether an investigation is underway, when it was reported, and by whom.
“If your personal health information had been stolen, how long would you want to wait before being told?” he said in a statement released Friday. “It has been three and a half months, and to my knowledge, not one of the 200,000 or more affected Ontario Health atHome patients has been notified. That’s nearly one-third of all home care patients in Ontario at risk.”
IPC Commissioner Patricia Kosseim confirmed on Friday that she had received Shamji’s letters and that her office was investigating the matter, but added it would be premature to comment about the details of the incident at this time.
Shamji says the cyber breach is the latest in a growing list of Ontario Health atHome failures, “including province-wide medication shortages, depleted supplies of vital homecare equipment, and unacceptable delays in care.”