Enjoyment of reporting

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 47, No. 3, April 2005, Page 147 Letters
By: Herman J. van Norden, MD

According to the Vancouver Sun, 7700 billings were made in which patients were identified as homosexuals—a shocking infraction of the rules of confidentiality. My wife and I were trained in continental Europe—the Netherlands—where confidentiality was much stricter than here. In the 1960s Belgian doctors went on strike because the government wanted the diagnosis before paying. Here we did not notice any such reticence. As soon as government schemes were introduced doctors revealed the embarrassing conditions of their patients with a candor that caused a German commentator to talk scathingly about die Rapportierfreudigkeit (enjoyment of reporting) of the profession.

The question is not an academic one. Many years ago a woman who worked in a processing office told us that the personnel made fun of claims for treating embarrassing conditions, such as genital or psychiatric ones. Since her complaint was in such a category she asked us to fudge the diagnosis.

—Herman J. van Norden, MD 
Vancouver

Herman J. van Norden, MD. Enjoyment of reporting. BCMJ, Vol. 47, No. 3, April, 2005, Page(s) 147 - Letters.


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Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

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