HIPAA vs the public good

Some states are requiring physicians to report poor drivers, or treating illegal immigrants:

While there is overwhelming support for reporting child abuse, physicians are less comfortable turning in patients who might lose their driver’s licenses due to medical conditions, and they oppose efforts to document immigrants who come for treatment.
Some physicians fear the demands on them to diagnose and report society’s problems will only continue to increase.

Comments

Anonymous
The readiness with which physicians served as major arm of the police state in communist regiemes should serve as a warning to all of us in the rush to a national medical database.
Anonymous
I agree this is a slippery slope. But some of it does make sense. Don’t we want people who should not drive to be taken off the road.
Perhaps a better approach is if we can report this to some intermediary services company who then can take it via the appropriate measures.
Anonymous
Sure, it all makes sense, that is why tyrrany is so common. It makes sense for us to report all psychiatric diagnoses to the BATF and local police, all prescriptions of sedatives to the DMV, all marital problems to the local police so they can go into the home and confiscate the guns, all substance abuse problems to employers, all underage sex to parents and the child protective services. It also makes sense to ban false religion, seditious political speech, being rude in public, ugly art, and time-wasting blogging. it makes sense to ban over-eating and fatty foods, and lets not forget to outlaw ordinary meanness and adultery. We should have the report the latter to spouses–doesn’t the cuckold have a right to know that he might end up supporting someone elses kid? Yep, it all makes sense.
Anonymous
it is just more nanny statism that is trying to remove any semblance of personal responsibility from the public domain.
if you have a medical condition that can interfere with the safe operation of an automobile and you choose to drive then it should be your responsibilty, the same as DUI. we look to shift responsibility and blame from ourselves to others, such as the doctor or the bartender. the only relevent question concerning driving priveliges a physician should be in the position of making is of competency, is the pt competent enough to decide for him/herself what risk level they should be driving at. then if an accident happens, a jury should decide if the person knowingly drove while at a deficit. i support trial by jury. it is a good basis of litigation/arbitration. the only thing about it that i would change is to make the deliberations taped and and available for viewing by the general public.
mike
Anonymous
As concerns vision necessary for driving, the requirements have been long in place for the physician or optometrist to certify, or not, a patient based on vision. The tricky part is the impaired but otherwise visually qualifying person: the demented or those whose collective physical problems make them unsafe to control an automobile. The rules for what is unsafe are not as clear.
A doctor can always tell a patient that he thinks they should not drive and give the reasons why. He can place documentation of that discussion in the patient’s medical record. But unless the state requests a special evaluation for a driver whose qualifications are in question, there isn’t much else doctors can do. I can’t see why this should be changed.
Anonymous
If there was a class in medical school on how to determine functional capacity to drive, I missed it. I know a lot of medicine, but except for the obvious, that is an assessment that I am not trained to make.
It is the DMV’s responsibility. My state DMV does their own vision tests, and at time by criteria unknown to me, driving tests. I do exercise common sense and take action to prevent the obviously impaired from driving–but that doesn’t mean all the rest are safe.

HIPAA vs the public good

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