We know receiving timely and secure updates about your care is important to you. As of December 2023, Grand River Hospital (GRH) and St. Mary’s General Hospital (SMGH) are collecting patient emails in order to send you efficient and timely information related to your care. We will only collect and use your email with your permission.

The hospital may use your email to send you:

  • a patient experience survey after your visit
  • appointment reminders
  • information to read before your appointment
  • Instructions on how to access your Health Record
  • Information and links for a virtual (online) appointment

Each time you come to the hospital our registration personnel will ask you to confirm or update your email address. It is important that this information is accurate and up-to-date as this minimizes the risk associated with email delivery to a wrong recipient. At this time, we are not able to receive emails from patients. Email from the hospital is a ‘one way’ communication channel.

We respect your privacy and will ensure that written notes, electronic records, discussions with your health care provider, and emails from the hospital remain confidential and private. The hospital follows all laws and rules to keep your personal health information secure/safe. However, there are risks associated with communicating by email and we aim to minimize these by ensuring that we have an up to date email address provided by you. Most email providers also have encryption enabled as a default setting to ensure that your email is not intercepted by an unauthorized third party and this aids a secured communication between the Hospitals and yourself.

We want you to make an informed choice and we are providing you information about these risks to help you decide whether or not to provide your email address.

Risks of using email could include:

  • Someone (other than you) could receive information if they have access to your email. This also includes emails stored in a ‘cloud environment’ e.g. iCloud etc.
  • Information could be sent to someone (other than you), if we don’t have the correct email address
  • You may not receive or not see information sent from the hospital, if the email is directed to your ‘junk mail’ folder.

You are responsible for making sure that your email is safe and secure. You will only receive emails from the hospitals if you have granted us permission to do so. GRH/SMGH will not be responsible if a breach of information occurs.

You may cancel the permission and remove your email address at anytime. This withdrawal of consent can be done by contacting the Health Information Management office (HIM) at GRH and SMGH on the following numbers respectively 519 749 4300 ext. 2108 and 519 749 6578 ext. 1000 Or email HIM at GRH releaseof.information@grhosp.on.ca and HIM at SMGH releaseofinfo@smgh.ca or during your next visit to the hospital.

If you have questions about the privacy of the use of your email, you can contact staff in our GRH Privacy Department by phone on 519-749-4300 ext. 5305 or by email: Privacy@grhosp.on.ca and SMGH Privacy Department by Phone on 519 749 6578 ext. 1209 or by email: Privacyoffice@smgh.ca

You can also learn more by reading our email collection policy which is available online. If you would like a paper copy of our email collection policy, please speak with our registration personnel.