Yet Alex vehemently resisted being taken to the hospital. Police crowd the emergency room, running the names of young black men through their database
Seems to me that the hospitals that let this happen in their ERs have forgotten their mission -- to heal people. They may have come up with some rationalization that says it is not a technical violation of doctor-patient confidentiality, but it sure as shit is a violation of the intent of that precept which is if you can't trust your doctor you won't get medical treatment.
As a comparison, after the PATRIOT Act was passed librarian associations stood up to the surveillance state by starting to redesign their computerized lending systems to be resistant to national-security-letter searches. Instead of keeping a lending history, as soon as a book is returned all records of it being borrowed are purged. That privacy is important for exactly the same reason, a borrowing history can be very revealing - medical books, law books, financial books, they can reveal quite a bit of personal information and if people feel like they are being watched, they simply won't borrow the books they need. You'd think doctors would stand up for their patients at least as much as librarians.
Seems to me that the hospitals that let this happen in their ERs have forgotten their mission -- to heal people. They may have come up with some rationalization that says it is not a technical violation of doctor-patient confidentiality, but it sure as shit is a violation of the intent of that precept which is if you can't trust your doctor you won't get medical treatment.
As a comparison, after the PATRIOT Act was passed librarian associations stood up to the surveillance state by starting to redesign their computerized lending systems to be resistant to national-security-letter searches. Instead of keeping a lending history, as soon as a book is returned all records of it being borrowed are purged. That privacy is important for exactly the same reason, a borrowing history can be very revealing - medical books, law books, financial books, they can reveal quite a bit of personal information and if people feel like they are being watched, they simply won't borrow the books they need. You'd think doctors would stand up for their patients at least as much as librarians.
http://www.ila.org/advocacy-files/pdf/Confidentiality_Best_P...