Some are wondering about the double standard that exists:
“So how come it’s okay for patients to blog about their psychiatrists, without disguise, without permission, without hesitation?”I just had to address this because this one-sidedness (if that’s a word) is something I see in the correctional world. Here’s how it happens:
Inmate X gets released and goes to the media. He/she alleges that the correctional facility, as well as correctional physician or nurses, are horrible incompetent sadistic people who provided terrible care. Inmate X is quoted in the newspaper along with detailed allegations of how he/she was mistreated. Because of healthcare privacy laws, the news media cannot be given factual information from the medical record which directly contradicts the inmate’s claims. The article states only that ‘the facility/administrator declined to provide information about inmate X citing medical confidentiality’. Thus, it appears that someone is covering up something.
Related posts:
- How HIPAA harms patients
- Patients die when doctors don’t talk to one another
- NPR on doctor blogs
- Should patients lie to their doctors?
- Could privacy laws and bureaucracy derail universal electronic health records?
- Medical bloggers at Blog World Expo, October 15th, 2009
- The media influence on patients and medical stories
{ 4 comments }
boy this is an interesting post! Never really thought about this before….but…
How about some legislation that says IF a patient starts discussing in public their care, particularly if it happens to be disparaging of the care practitioners, that it implies consent for the care practitioners to respond in kind (i.e. public dissemination of information)?
Isn’t there some precedent that allow for this?
of course not, because Congress, in it’s desire to shield their members with STD’s, didn’t include that in HIPPA
I dunno, maybe cause they psychiatrist isn’t spilling their guts to the patient? C’mon folks.
I’ve unfortunately had to think about it a great deal . . . both as a doctor and a patient.
Sometimes the patients are right.
I don’t believe legislation is necessary to address this “problem”. Once a patient “violates” the privilege and starts talking openly, doctors do have the legal right to respond. Most don’t.
Just like most doctors do not discuss a malpractice case once its resolved, and even if they “won”.
And allow me to make the observation that the press is just lazy most of the time. They could get the patient making the allegations to sign a release for medical records (which, by my experience, doesn’t generally tell the story the press is looking for anyway – medical mistakes often don’t get a lot of detailed documentation).
Comments on this entry are closed.