The Other Exam Room: When Doctors 'Google' Their Patients

theodp writes "Writing in the NY Times, Dr. Haider Javed Warraich shares a dirty little medical secret: doctors do 'Google' their patients, and the practice is likely to only become more common. And while he personally feels the practice should be restricted to situations where there's a genuine safety issue, an anecdote Warraich shares illustrates how patient search could provide insight into what otherwise might be unsolved mysteries — or lead to a snap misdiagnosis: 'I was once taking care of a frail, older patient who came to the hospital feeling very short of breath. It wasn't immediately clear why, but her breathing was getting worse. To look for accidental ingestions, I sent for a drug screen and, to my great surprise, it came back positive for cocaine. It didn't make sense to me, given her age and the person lying before me, and I was concerned she had been the victim of some sort of abuse. She told me she had no idea why there was cocaine in her system. When I walked out of the room, a nurse called me over to her computer. There, on MugShots.com, was a younger version of my patient's face, with details about how she had been detained for cocaine possession more than three decades earlier. I looked away from the screen, feeling like I had violated my patient's privacy. I resumed our medical exam, without bringing up the finding on the Internet, and her subsequent hospital course was uneventful.'"

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I recently..

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently suffered through some severe asthmatic symptoms without a diagnosis, i was up front with all the doctors I had seen and told them I had tried marijuana before because honestly, if that is something causing my problems I'd like to know so i can know to avoid it, that information didn't stay between my doctor and I, my insurance company found out even though I specifically put on all hippa forms not to release information about substance abuse or mental health, one of the doctors works for the DEA and reported me even though all I was doing was trying to better my health, I'm sorry but if you think google is your worse enemy you are wrong, it is your doctors themselves when it comes to disclosure, you think medical privacy laws would allow me to disclose information like that to my doctor but my recent experience proved otherwise.