The transfer of medical records is usually done on a request from Veterans Affairs, based on the request by the member to Veterans Affairs Canada.
We are not able to transfer files directly from the Canadian Armed Forces to Veterans Affairs Canada because of their regulations and the Privacy Act. When we receive a request from Veterans Affairs Canada, we need to take the medical record and sever any third-party information from those medical records.
For example, sometimes when you are encountering a patient, a physician may write in a clinical note that the member's spouse is having problems with mental health issues. It's not appropriate for us to give information about the spouse to Veterans Affairs Canada. We need to make sure that that kind of information is removed from all of the files. That creates a bit of a delay in our being able to process and transfer those files. I will say that we have increased the staff that are doing that severing right now. We've reduced the backlog of files from about 1,600 to 800. We are now able to process requests from Veterans Affairs Canada within 31 days, which is far better than we did about 6 or 8 months ago.
We cannot release those files without the member's authorization and a request to Veterans Affairs Canada.