Monday, February 18, 2008

Is Your Privacy Respected?

Patient privacy issues cannot be overlooked by any medical institution as patients are at their most vulnerable when in the hands of the medical practitioner. A large segment of plastic surgery patients have a surgery in order to correct some or the other physical flaw.

It is common for doctors to keep a record of photographs of the patient’s body before surgery and post surgery so that improvements can be compared and highlighted. This step is taken only with the express permission of the cosmetic surgery patient though.

Further use of these photographs for information, education and advertisement purposes again require the assent of the patient. A cosmetic surgeon cannot utilize such material as it is a complete disrespect of patient privacy and liable to court penalization.

Cases where patient recovery photographs have been used against their knowledge is not uncommon and experts warn people to beware of such matters while selecting a plastic surgeon.

At the Plastic Surgery Institute of California we pay a lot of thought to patient privacy and ascertain that the patient is properly educated and prepared for a surgery and its after-math before they sign in for our services.

What goes on behind closed doors stays behind closed doors in the Plastic Surgery Institute of California, unless expressly permitted by the patients to be done otherwise.

1 comment:

Benjamin Wright said...

Maybe "terms of use" could help patients protect the privacy of their health records. http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/02/contracts-for-patient-privacy.html