March 17, 2025
This Privacy Notice applies to the personal information of care aides and community health workers (“registrants”), people who apply for registration as a care aide or community health worker (“applicants”), and other individuals who interact with the Registry.
The Registry’s mandate
The Registry’s overarching mandate is to protect vulnerable patients, residents and clients receiving healthcare services in British Columbia, by ensuring that current or prospective care aides and community health workers, also known as Health Care Assistants (each an “HCA”), are appropriately trained and duly registered.
The Registry is a program delivered by the Health Employers Association of British Columbia for the Ministry of Health.
The Registry’s commitment to you
The Registry is committed to protecting your privacy. The Registry collects, uses and discloses personal information in accordance with applicable privacy legislation in British Columbia.
The Registry collects personal information for various reasons from registrants, applicants, and other individuals who interact with the Registry, including but not limited to:
- consider and assess applications for registration.
- assess ongoing eligibility for inclusion on the Registry.
- investigate and dispose of resident abuse reports against registrants under the mandated investigation process.
- manage and protect the Registry’s systems, as well as provide system support for registrants, applicants and other users of the Registry’s systems.
- contact registrants about the Registry’s programs or activities, updated information related to HCA education and practice, and to obtain registrant feedback.
In the course of the Registry’s operation and administration, the Registry will disclose a registrant’s personal information to provide verification to a health care employer that a current or prospective HCA is duly registered.
Collection, use and disclosure
When the Registry needs to collect your personal information, the Registry usually gets the information directly from you. The Registry will collect personal information from another source when the Registry:
- assesses the competency of a person applying to register as an HCA;
- verifies the applicant’s employment history;
- verifies academic credentials;
- investigates and disposes of a resident abuse report about a registrant; or
- is otherwise authorized or required by law.
Service improvements: The Registry may also collect personal information for the purposes of improving its services for registrants and other stakeholders, developing programs, or gathering feedback on its operations.
Register: Information about registrants is not publicly available on the Registry’s register.
Ministry of Health: From time to time, the Registry may compile and disclose HCA information to the Ministry of Health, health care employers, registrants, other interested stakeholders or the public, in the form of aggregate information or data obtained through the Registry’s operation. This aggregate information or data will not include personally identifiable information concerning any particular registrant, client or other identifiable individual.
The Registry keeps personal information used to make a decision about an individual for a minimum of one year. Personal information may be kept for longer, for example if required by law, as is the case for financial records, or for other such related business purposes.
The personal information the Registry collects and uses is generally stored only in Canada. The Registry, however, may occasionally use systems based in other geographical areas and service providers.
Visiting our website and cookies
If you visit the Registry’s website to browse, read pages, or download information, we will gather and store certain information about the visit. This information includes, but is not limited to, such things as:
- the name of the user.
- the Internet Protocol Address, domain name used, and approximate geographical location. The Internet Protocol address is a numerical identifier assigned either to your Internet service provider or directly to your computer. This address can be translated to determine the domain name of your service provider (e.g. gov.bc.ca, xcompany.com or yourschool.edu).
- the type of browser and operating system.
- the date and time of the visit.
- how you engage with website content.
- the web pages or services accessed.
Information collected automatically is used for purposes such as administering the website, assessing system performance, and improving web services and web site security and management.
The Registry’s web services also use cookies. A cookie is a small file stored by your browser on behalf of a website, accessible only to that website for reading or modification. The Registry’s web services use both sessional cookies (which exist only until your browser is closed) as well as long-term cookies to record certain items: e.g., if you are logged in to the website, and who you are logged in as. Cookies may contain identifying information about you, such as your email address or username. You may clear your browser’s cookies at any time by consulting its documentation.
Accuracy and individual access
The Registry makes every reasonable effort to ensure that personal information is accurate and complete. The Registry may contact you for an update if it becomes aware that your information is inaccurate.
You are also responsible for contacting the Registry if you know your information needs to be updated.
To update or access your personal information or request a correction of an error or omission:
- If you are a registrant or an applicant, you can sign in to your account or contact the Registry toll-free at 1.833.725.1699 or by email: register@cachwr.bc.ca
- If you are a member of the public, please contact the Registry’s Privacy Officer at privacy@heabc.bc.ca
The Registry uses reasonable security measures to protect the personal information it has collected, such as, but not limited to, reasonable physical and electronic access controls and regular system updates. These measures are intended to prevent:
- an unauthorized person from accessing the personal information on our website, and
- someone from collecting, using, sharing, or disposing of personal information when they are not supposed to.
Due to the nature of the technologies involved, there may still exist security or privacy risks and we cannot guarantee that your personal information will not be collected, used or disclosed in ways not conforming with this policy.
Although we use reasonable security measures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, we cannot absolutely guarantee the security of your personal information or that your personal information will not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed not in accordance with this policy. In the event of a breach of your personal information we will notify you if required by applicable privacy legislation, either by email or a clear posting on our website as permitted by law. By using our webpage, you agree to accept the notice in that format.
System activity records (metadata) and system backups
When you connect and interact with the Registry’s online services, the Registry’s IT systems automatically create, collect and record some technical information about those activities. These activity records, also known as metadata, are a necessary and critical element in managing and maintaining the security and integrity of all modern IT systems used by organizations such as the Registry. For example, an email address you use to connect and interact with the Registry’s online services may be one piece of information recorded in metadata. In this case, the technical information allows the Registry to keep track of which connections made it through the Registry’s system firewall and to identify whether an unauthorized connection was allowed. This helps the Registry meet its obligations to protect the personal information of the Registry’s system users.
Information provided to the Registry by registrants, applicants or other individuals may be stored temporarily in the Registry’s system backups, for the purposes of business continuity and disaster recovery.
Access to the activity records stored in the Registry’s systems and to the system backups is restricted. Access is available to authorized staff and service providers only, on a need-to-know basis, as necessary to provide user support or for purposes related to matters such as: installing, implementing, maintaining, repairing, trouble shooting or upgrading the Registry’s IT system or system equipment; data or operational recovery following a system or equipment failure; or, other matters related to maintaining information security and confidentiality in the Registry’s systems and networks or continuity of the Registry’s business operations. The Registry’s staff and service providers are bound by legal obligations to maintain the confidentiality of information in the Registry’s systems, in accordance with applicable laws and the Registry’s information management and security policies in force. However, despite these security and confidentiality arrangements, it is possible that the Registry and its service providers may from time to time be compelled to disclose system activity records or system backups, by court order or as otherwise required in accordance with applicable laws.
Changes to this privacy notice
The Registry may update this notice from time to time to reflect changes to the Registry’s information practices. The Registry will post any changes to this page, and will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Notice in an archive for your review.
The Registry encourages you to periodically review the Registry’s Privacy Notice for the latest information on the Registry’s privacy practices and to contact the Registry if you have any questions or concerns.
You may send your privacy-related questions, concerns or complaints to the Registry’s Privacy Officer by email to privacy@heabc.bc.ca.
If the Registry’s Privacy Officer is unable to resolve your concern, you may also write to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia.