I would be pretty angry if I knew this was happening. In fact, I had a very stern discussion with a psychiatrist I was seeing about eight years ago. He was using my GP's office to see clients in her office, but I had been assured that my psychiatric file would be separate from my GP's medical file and no information would be shared without my written permission. He also assured me that his file was confidential from office staff and kept in a different locked file cabinet. When I was leaving one day, I saw him hand my file to one of the two office secretaries, she opened it to see when my next appointment was and then threw the file onto a stack of other patient files. Staff were walking in and out of the office getting things and a young woman came in and scooped all the files off the table and trotted off to file them. I was pretty mad (No, I didn't think that the young woman was going to go into the staff room and read all the files, but it ticked me off that I'd be assured my personal information was being treated as private and confidential and a person could just open the file without my consent and another could just come in and walk off with it). I had a conversation with the psychiatrist about the issue. He didn't seem concerned and didn't give much credence to my voiced concerns so I didn't go back to see him.