Unprofessional Act or Political Mudslinging?

US Senate candidate Milton Wolf (@miltonwolfmd), who also happens to be a radiologist, is catching heat because he had previously posted patient x-rays on his Facebook account … and then made what some people would consider as inappropriate comments about the patients who were depicted in the x-rays. Articles in the Topeka Capital Journal are here, here, and here. Note the repeatedly recycled content. The story was also picked up in Talking Points Memo and on Breitbart.com For example, in the comments to the right, he commented that the positioning of a dead patient’s head on CT scan wasn’t going to cause the patient to complain. A spokesman for the doctor’s opponent, Senator Pat Roberts, said that Dr. Wolf’s posts raised “legal and professional responsibilities to maintain privacy of patient medical information.” It appears that Dr. Wolf anonymized the pictures before posting them. If that was the case, HIPAA doesn’t apply to deidentified health information, so there was no “legal responsibility” to maintain privacy of medical information that could not be traced back to the patient. Professional responsibility is a separate issue. John Carney, president of the Center for Practical Bioethics, reportedly stated that Dr. Wolf’s posts would be “beyond alarming for a professional in the field of medicine.” An “array” of other medical ethicists who viewed the images or were provided a description of...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Medical-Legal News Commentary Source Type: blogs