Summary
Confidentiality and the protection of information privacy are fundamental principles of medicine dating back to the Hippocratic Oath in 400 B.C. In contrast to this ancient privacy principle is the occasional investigative need of law enforcement agencies for access to hospital patients' personal information. My thesis explores the conflict that exists throughout North America from this intersection of privacy rights and law enforcement needs, with the laws and policies in British Columbia and Canada as the research focus. What legal and ethical obligations do health care providers have to protect the privacy of patient information when law enforcement agencies want access to it? Health care providers in hospitals have a mixture of mandatory and discretionary powers to disclose patient information when responding to requests by law enforcement agencies. The patient information disclosure conflict arises from two competing cultures: medical advocacy, informational self-determination and personal protection versus law enforcement and public protection. Hospitals can observe their duties of confidentiality and privacy as medical advocates for patients, while responding to many of the investigative disclosure needs of law enforcement agencies.The outcome of current negotiations between health care providers in hospitals and the police will be mutual understanding of the duty to protect the confidentiality and privacy of patient information, balanced with the need for timely and legal disclosure of patient information that is relevant to active police investigations, as recognized by statute law, court rulings, and the codes of ethics for health care providers. At what point does the hospital patient's right to privacy surrender to the right of the state to know? The police and hospital communities are now developing a disclosure protocol which finds that balance point. The success or failure of the disclosure protocol will be evident when police visit hospital emergency rooms in pursuit of investigative information, and both the police and health care providers understand what information can and cannot be provided, and when it can be provided.