Patients of Saskatchewan hospitals who will have some of personal information automatically disclosed to hospital fundraising foundations will have no recourse to complain if they object to the fundraiser's actions, the provincial privacy czar says.

In a statement issued Monday, privacy commissioner Gary Dickson listed a number of concerns he has about changes to health-privacy legislation allowing health regions to pass along personal information such as names and addresses without obtaining the "express or opt-in" consent of patients.

One of Dickson's most serious concerns is that because his office has no jurisdiction to investigate complaints about hospital foundations, people have no recourse to complain.

He also said people's confidence in the health regions could be put at risk if they have no say in the matter.

There's no solid evidence to show fundraising efforts have been hampered in the past 6.5 years — when the law was last changed in favour of blocking automatic disclosure — by letting people make a choice if they wanted their information disclosed, Dickson said.

The changes take effect this month after the amendments passed in early April.

Health regions have final say

The provincial government's health privacy officer has previously said patients still have final say over their information and that it will be up to the individual health regions to decide whether they want their patients to have an opt-in or opt-out process.

Jacqueline Messer-Lepage said in early April that for the last several years, health regions and hospital foundations have been trying to win back the ability to contact patients directly for donations.

Health regions used and shared such information for decades, but that was banned by the then-NDP government in 2003.

The Saskatchewan Party government said earlier this year it would revert to the old ways and begin allowing patient names and addresses to be disclosed without their consent.

"The intention of this change is to make it easier for publicly-funded health facilities to identify people who might be motivated to donate, while maintaining meaningful protection of patients' privacy," said Health Minister Don McMorris in an April 6 news release.

On Monday, Dickson urged government MLA's to require people to give express consent.

He said out of six provinces that have their own health-privacy legislation, half of them require a patient give such consent prior to their information being disclosed.