Chapter 6

Now this chapter's content came as a surprise to me. I don't know why but I did not expect this book to delve into something that I grew up listening to. Both of my parents are in the medical industry and have been since I was born (My mom is an X-Ray Technician and my dad is the Director of Imaging Services). I remember my mom telling me stories about how things used to be before HIPAA was introduced and how easy it was for anyone to get your medical history. I for one do not feel that I have anything to hide in my history (only a shoulder reconstruction and some MRIs). Other people are not that fortunate though. I could not imagine people, especially potential employers, looking at my medical history as a way to hire me. The one thing that stuck out with me was the story about how the girl and her fiance were in the hospital and the medical staff said something about how the baby was doing, a baby that her fiance had no clue about. It was an innocent slip but it still hurt that relationship. With the new forms of technology out there today, it is so much easier to get anything about anybody at anytime if you work in the medical industry. Even janitors can see patient information if they take a peak at the computers or even the charts.
Technology can also hurt the health care industry. My dad was working at a hospital that was installing a piece of hardware called Night Hawk. It was supposed to send digital x-rays to doctors in Seattle so that someone could read the images at night when there were no doctors on staff. He came to the hospital in the midst of the install and a year later they were still having problems with the system. Patients weren't getting their images read on time and in the medical industry, that can mean life or death.