New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently singed a bill into law making it a crime for emergency responders to post photos or videos of crash victims on the Internet without the consent of the family. Violators face penalties of up to 18 months incarceration and fines up to $10,000. While I understand the intention of this legislation, my head screams "where's the common sense!?"
For those of us who began our EMS careers prior to the implementation of "HIPAA," patient privacy was one of the most important topics discussed in EMT classes. The concept of "what happens on a call stays on the call" was well-used and sound advice for the new EMT. I can't remember the number of times I heard this, nor the number of times I have passed it along to new EMTs in training. This is simple common sense, but as we've all heard, common sense isn't so common any more...especially with the explosive growth of the Internet, social networking sites, and web-enabled mobile devices.
Additionally, in the mid-2000s, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) made it a federal crime to violate a patient's privacy. This legislation introduced the concept of protected health information, better known as PHI, which covers information that identifies or can be used to identify a patient
(individually identifiable information). PHI includes health information in any format
- paper (written), electronic, or oral; information about the patient's
health status or condition; and can include research information and photographs, videotapes,
and other images. With this in mind, why was a state statute necessary in New Jersey when a federal statute already existed? All that was necessary was for the patient's family to file a privacy complaint with the responding agency.
Protecting the privacy of patients, whether living or deceased, is one
of the highest priorities of an EMS provider, ranking up there with
scene safety. However, instead of creating more "feel good" laws, lets all exercise better judgement and common sense. In the rare instances both of these self-policing practices fail, the use of preexisting statutes to prosecute the offenders should set the example that these lapses in judgement will not be tolerated by those entrusted with patient care.
