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Ie: HSE set to stop giving details on patients to media

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Dissent

Elaine Keogh reports:

The Health Service Executive is to stop providing journalists with information on the condition of patients.

It says that to tell the media the condition of a patient is “incompatible,” with its obligations to the privacy rights patients have “through the Constitution and indeed our obligations to article 8 of the European Charter for Human Rights”.

The media generally enquire about the condition of people following major accidents or violent incidents or if the person is a public personality.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) wants to meet the HSE about the move, which was done without any consultation with the union and it has asked the executive to postpone its implementation.

The announcement by the HSE is welcome news to this privacy blogger, and while I understand that the press will not be happy, I think it is absolutely the right decision and interpretation of privacy rights. According to the news story:

Mr Dooley said what the HSE is doing amounts to a blanket provision and there should instead be a protocol that includes reference to family consent. The union has written to the HSE seeking a meeting and also asking them to postpone it.

In my opinion, the HSE protocol does not need any such reference, as any such provision would assume that the family has the right to consent for the individual patient and/or to waive the patient’s right to medical privacy. There is nothing that stops family members from talking to the media and sharing whatever information they have that they think appropriate to share, and I hope the HSE hangs tough on this one.

Read more in the Irish Examiner.

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