PRIVACY WATCH : Examining Eye

Two signs of the times in modern hospitals are a need for increased security and the presence of a related technology that might raise privacy concerns. A remarkable and troubling lawsuit filed by an Orange County woman alleges that her breast and gynecological examination at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana last year was monitored by a surveillance camera and was transmitted to at least one nurses’ station where anyone working, or even stopping by, could have watched it.

Obviously things like this shouldn’t happen, even if, as in this case, there is disagreement about the degree of any privacy violation.

The lawsuit says that the hospital and a doctor failed to ask for permission to have a camera operating and to inform the woman, 26, that her exam was being monitored. Her attorney says television monitors were positioned where “janitors, orderlies, attendants--all strangers” who gather at nurses’ stations could have seen the procedure.

An attorney for the hospital defends the cameras on security grounds and says that the lens was behind the patient’s head and thus could not show what the doctor was doing. Moreover, he says that the presence of the camera in the room was obvious to the patient.

A little common sense should prevail in cases like this. If hospitals have cameras in places where sensitive exams are being done, then full disclosure and written consent of patients should be required. If a patient objects to even a discreetly located camera, it shouldn’t be difficult to turn it off or put a cap on the lens.