Re: 911:: Patients rights

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/12/00 8:50:34 PM Pacific Standard Time,

heimdalcmo@... writes:

<< Question: If a patient tells you on the phone that they have Aids or

Hepititis then are they not giving you permission to tell the personel that

will be responding. Waiving their patients rights. >>

Tammy,

Essentially you are correct. If someone tells you their HIV status, clearly

they want you to know. However, what they may NOT know is that if you pass on

this information via almost any means there is a good chance someone other

than responding personnel may hear it. It's not the responding personnel who

will (I hope) wish to discriminate against this person or do them harm...it's

the unknown people who may be 'listening'. Most people don't know that

transmissions are often heard by people outside of public safety and

therefore aren't really making an informed decision when they give us

permission to tell responding personnel.

Even if there weren't laws prohibiting these types of communications (which

there are), it would still be in the best interest of our patients to ask

them to repeat the info to the personnel who arrive to assist them.

Hope this answered your question!

Coleen

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/13/00 8:19:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,

listowner-ken@... writes:

> Our logs are very verbose and include everything the dispatcher types into

> the notes. If you enter someone is HIV+, then the reporter will see that,

> or whomever wants a copy of the records. There's no way to override this-

> that's the way the CAD is programmed.

>

I believe that entering that info into CAD could constitute a violation of

the White Act much the same as sending it via MDT would. This is

especially true if the department knows that this information is passed

along. The laws vary from state-to-state, of course, but that might be a

very good question to run the attorney.

Coleen

[Guest guest]

I don't know the intricacies of the laws, so here goes:

Aren't 911 tapes public record? Doesn't Joe Q. Public have access to

anything contained within them under the freedom of information act? So,

by someone divulging their medical condition over a taped 911 line, doesn't

take effectively take away any privacy issues???

When an incident is created, doesn't the pertinent health information get

typed into the incident gist? So can't that reporter who visits your

center everyday for a copy of the logs read that same info? then publish

it in his newspaper under that little column they all have for police, fire

and EMS runs?

-Ken

> Question: If a patient tells you on the phone that they have Aids or

> Hepititis then are they not giving you permission to tell the personel that

> will be responding. Waiving their patients rights.

[Guest guest]

Let me clarify on the reporter bit- and this may come as a shock to

some. But when I worked as a reporter, one of the things I had to do was

call around to the towns we covered and get the police and fire incidents

that occurred since the last edition (it was a weekly). Now, most PDs and

FDs refused to disseminate anything over the phone- but if we showed up,

then we were entitled to the information. Legally, there was nothing

those public services could do to prevent us from viewing the logs, taking

notes and reprinting the events. Regional center or not, you might find

that your legally obligated...

Our logs are very verbose and include everything the dispatcher types into

the notes. If you enter someone is HIV+, then the reporter will see that,

or whomever wants a copy of the records. There's no way to override this-

that's the way the CAD is programmed.

By the way, I don't believe our center charges a fee for tapes.

-Ken

>our 9-1-1 tapes are available to the public via subpoena or freedom of

>information (foi). if we get a subpoena we don't have much choice but to

>provide it. if we get an FOI request we can deny if the call is part of a

>case being investigated. there are also some narrow provisions for denying

>certain parts of the tape...we check with our atty on a case-by-case basis.

>as for the incident ticket the same rules would apply but in our system only

>the chief medical complaint makes it on to the ticket itself. btw...we

>don't have the press stopping by our center and if they did i suspect they

>would need either a subpoena or FOI to get any information from us. we're a

>consolidated center (28 agencies) and we have the luxury of refering all

>press queries back to the police or fire dept.

[Guest guest]

>> From: Ken

Let me clarify on the reporter bit- and this may come as a shock to

some. But when I worked as a reporter, one of the things I had to do was

call around to the towns we covered and get the police and fire incidents

that occurred since the last edition (it was a weekly). Now, most PDs and

FDs refused to disseminate anything over the phone- but if we showed up,

then we were entitled to the information. Legally, there was nothing

those public services could do to prevent us from viewing the logs, taking

notes and reprinting the events. Regional center or not, you might find

that your legally obligated...>>>

we don't keep a 'log' per-se, ken, just the CAD tickets (1500-2000 per day).

and i'm not certain what can and cannot be legally disseminated to anyone.

we've never been asked. btw..in another life i worked for a small am/fm

radio station in west central illinois and i too had to call the city,

county and state police (along with the funeral homes) to gather news for

the station. we had no dedicated news staff so everything was gathered over

the telephone.

[Guest guest]

Mmmm. We're a state service. Re-active rather than pro-active. Won't

happen until someone makes an issue of it, and usually by then it's too

late- it becomes a media lead.

-Ken

> > Our logs are very verbose and include everything the dispatcher types into

> > the notes. If you enter someone is HIV+, then the reporter will see that,

> > or whomever wants a copy of the records. There's no way to override this-

> > that's the way the CAD is programmed.

>

>I believe that entering that info into CAD could constitute a violation of

>the White Act much the same as sending it via MDT would. This is

>especially true if the department knows that this information is passed

>along. The laws vary from state-to-state, of course, but that might be a

>very good question to run the attorney.