taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (11/04/86)
This article is taken from RISKS Digest, Volume 4, Issue 3. The following items were posted to the delphi digest on mod.mac. The issues have been covered before...but the example is worth noting. From: PIZZAMAN (14213) Subject: Computers and Medical Charts Date: 26-OCT 16:26 Business Mac The most amazing thing happened at the hospital yesterday. I was accused of unethical behavior because I used my computer to prepare a conference for the Department of Surgery! Let me explain.... I am the Clinical Coordinator of the Department of Surgery at a rural community hospital. This is a voluntary job, in addition to my regular practice of surgery. My responsibilities include the preparing of the mortality and morbidity conferences each month, as well as trying to put together educational topics of interest for the other surgeons. Having trained at a University Hospital in Philadelphia, I enjoy doing this teaching. In order to prepare for one of these conferences, I took my Tandy 100 to the record room, and took my notes on it. When I got to the office, I plugged the Imagewriter cable into the RS-232 connector on the back of the Tandy, and using Smartcom II, loaded the information into the Mac for work processing, spread sheeting, and graph creation. Now, I am being accused of taking confidential information out of the hospital in the form of patient records and doctors names! All I had on the computer were my notes. The paranoid medical staff is afraid that having this information in my "COMPUTER" is dangerous, in some way. Since I consider my two computers just extensions of other work tools that I use, I can't understand this. Would they be just as paranoid if I used a legal pad to make notes instead of the computer? By the way, the bylaws of the hospital allow for the use of records for research, and I had permission from the President of the Medical Staff to do the study in question. Pretty amazing paranoia, huh? Do people really still fear computers this way? Any physicians out there have similar experiences? Any legal advice? [people really *do* distrust computers. --- Dave]