Public Health Law Map - Beta 5 - Medical and Public Health Law Site

give permission, the officer should be politely but firmly shown the door.
If the patient is in custody, the officer still has no right to consent to or know about
the patient’s medical care beyond the specific requirements of the state’s laws. Being
under arrest increases the importance of the patient’s right of privacy. The physician
must be careful not to interfere with the officer’s duties, just as the physician should
not allow the officer to interfere with the patient’s medical care. If privacy is required
for the medical examination, the patient’s dignity should be protected as much as
possible consistent with preventing the patient’s escape. The physician should not
interfere with actions that are necessary to maintain custody of a conscious and
potentially dangerous prisoner.
Court-ordered medical care is different from care requested by a peace officer. A
police officer does not have the right to overrule a patient’s decisions on medical
consent; a court does. A physician who is presented with a valid court order to do
something to or for a patient may either honor the order or get a lawyer to fight the
order. Physicians who are routinely involved with court- ordered care should be well
versed in the procedures. The emergency physician in the county hospital may be
routinely ordered to do drug testing on specific prisoners. This physician or the
nurses who work there regularly may know the forms and the judges’ names and
have no problem with honoring the order. The physician in a private hospital who is
presented with an unusual order should contact the hospital attorney or someone in
the court system for a clarification of the order.
Some medical records are protected even from court orders, but these are usually in
the custody of agencies that know the extent of their authority to withhold records.
Venereal disease control programs frequently receive subpoenas for medical records
that are protected from subpoena by state law. The judge in a divorce proceeding
may not know about the law protecting these records or may have authorized that
subpoena as one in a large group. The public health program will routinely request
that the subpoena be quashed. A physician in public health or drug rehabilitation who
deals regularly with protected records must view the possibility of spending some
time in jail on a contempt citation as an occupational hazard. The physician who does
not deal with these matters frequently should consult an attorney when presented
with a court order.
E. The Role of Community Physicians in Public Health
ources available through the public health system and national organizations such as
chemical manufacturers.
A private physician should be cautious about making pronouncements on
environmental hazards, either to patients or to the news media. An association between
exposure and disease may seem obvious to a physician who has seen several cases, and
yet be scientifically incorrect. A physician who publicly accuses a business of
wrongdoing, rather than making a report to the health department, may be open to a
suit for damages by the business. Public health officials are protected from such suits
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