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The Sharp Grossmont Hospital in San Diego, California, and Sharp HealthCare are terribly sorry.
Yes, admits Sharp President and CEO Chris Howard in a letter dated April 4, the hospital authorities secretly recorded many private gynecological procedures in three rooms of the "Women's Center". But they did not want to do it. They promise that all the recordings are locked in a safe and that they will not do it again.
This letter comes after a series of lawsuits made public the hospital's mistake. In 2016, patients sued Sharp HealthCare and the Sharp Grossmont Hospital, alleging privacy violations and negligence stemming from video recordings, as reported by Buzzfeed News in March. But a court rejected the plaintiffs' claim to be heard in a class action. Thus, last month, 81 women signed a similar lawsuit. The complainants argue that from July 2012 to June 2013, the health care provider secretly recorded everything from births to hysterectomies, sterilizations and so on, without warning patients. The plaintiffs only knew that they had been registered secretly because a third-party administrator had told them, their attorney, to WBAL TV.
Sharp says he wants to speak directly to the "community" and explain what really happened. However, as the lawsuits are ongoing, Sharp does not say as much. What was revealed in his letter is that the company began secret taping, using motion-sensing cameras in computers, as part of an internal drug investigation.
After receiving reports of missing equipment and medications in the anesthetic trolleys in the three women's wards, hospital authorities questioned the staff and tried to find the culprit because "[u]The authorized withdrawal or abuse of medication by a doctor or other health professional may pose a threat to the safety of the patient, "says the letter. "We would never want to expose our patients to this type of harm," writes Howard.
When the investigation provided no information, Sharp installed cameras on the carts, for the sole purpose of recording what was happening in the immediate vicinity of the carts. Things did not go as planned, however. It turned out that the cameras were recording the extremely private procedures of hundreds of women for nearly a year. According to the complaint, the patients were "extremely vulnerable". The women captured on video (paywall) were "conscious and unconscious, partially dressed at the operating table, undergoing medical procedures and communicating with their doctor and medical staff."
The lawsuit, filed in a state court in California, alleges that Sharp not only violated the privacy of patients using secret cameras, but also was negligent in handling the recordings. The videos were stored on computers in the hospital rooms and were not protected by a password. There is no journal to document who could have seen them. Allison Goddard, a plaintiffs' lawyer, told CNN. "It's horrible to think that, especially in the current era of ubiquitous Internet videos, if any of these videos were falling into the wrong hands, there would be no way to control it. Your medical care is beyond your control. "
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