Hospital beds equipped with panic buttons and video cameras installed in intensive care units. They are proposals that are part of a legislative project rejected by the Health Committee in the Senate and that are not approved by either doctors or data security specialists.
Video cameras in ATI wards would violate patients’ right to privacy. Photo source: archive
The draft law, submitted by the USR in the context of the scandal at the “Saint Pantelimon” Hospital in Bucharest, stipulates the obligation of hospitals to install panic buttons on all beds in the halls. The project also provides for the placement of video cameras so as to ensure “continuous monitoring of medical activities, without compromising patients’ privacy“.
The video recordings would be stored for a minimum of 30 days, exclusively for monitoring the quality of the medical act, investigating possible incidents or ensuring the safety of patients and medical staff. The project also provides for sanctions for hospitals that will not comply with the law, should these changes pass the Parliament. We are talking about fines between 50,000 and 200,000 lei.
Emanuel Ungureanu: “Many litigious situations would be avoided”
Emanuel Ungureanu, USR deputy, one of the initiators of the bill, said that these surveillance cameras placed in sensitive departments such as ATI, UPU and operating rooms “it would have allowed continuous monitoring of events in the respective areas, which would have discouraged unethical practices and provided evidence in case of litigious situations. We would have avoided embarrassing situations in which patients film nurses, nurses covertly film doctors, and prosecutors, instead of having access to objective evidence, used means of public slander, images given to television.”
Ungureanu claims that installing panic buttons in hospital rooms would provide patients with a quick alert mechanism in case of emergency: “Hospitals must have alarm buttons, only some do, some don’t. Obligation is one thing, the requirement from the accreditation conditions is quite another. The safety and life of patients should never come second, and hospital accreditation should not be just a formality, every building, every floor, every equipment should be checked to be exactly as it says in the law and in the accreditation sheet.”
Personal data security expert: ‘An extremely intrusive measure’
The initiative of placing the video cameras is a commendable one if it were also “standing” because, according to experts in the protection of personal data, the method is extremely intrusive. “I am convinced that there are other means that can determine the health status of the patient. The installation of video cameras is an intrusive surveillance given the fact that we are talking about special data, which require much stricter technical and organizational measures”, stated for “Adevărul” Daniela Cireașa, president of the Association of Privacy and Data Protection Professionals (ASCPD).
Daniela Cireașa also points out other aspects that should be taken into account. “We then have to ask ourselves, who has access to those images? Who sees them in real time? Who has access to the records? Where are those images stored and who has access to the archive? Where will the screen on which the respective images will run be located? Because we are talking about special data that could be accessed by anyone who enters the respective medical department”.
The specialist recalls the case of a hospital in Portugal that was fined for this reason. “All medical staff had access to patient data without certain categories of access rights.”
At this moment, says the expert in protecting personal data, there would be no valid reason for processing this information. “We are talking about vulnerable people, whether they are adults or minors, they also belong to this category. Admitted to the ATI, they are not in their best health”.
The signatories of the bill consider the images captured on the cameras to be indisputable evidence in the case of a situation that could be much more easily investigated by the authorities. “Here we are discussing a data processing in a legitimate interest. However, every time the basis for the processing of personal data is in legitimate interest, an analysis of the given situation is done first. In order to see if this legitimate interest is above the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subjects. At first glance, it seems to me that, in the present case, the legitimate interests are not above. Just going with the idea that something is going to happen at some point…it’s over-processing.” Daniela Cireașa also declared.
ATI doctor: “Such a measure is not justified”
We also wanted to find out the opinion of an ATI doctor, and the reaction was a categorical “NO”. “The fact that there are video cameras in the hallways, in front of the intensive care unit, in front of the operating rooms is one thing. But to mount them in ATI, it’s like too much, in my opinion”, commented for “Adevărul” and Dr. Carmen Pantiș, ATI doctor at the Oradea Emergency Hospital. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable working with a video camera filming me non-stop. Because they don’t only film the patient, they also film the doctor, assistants, and the patient’s family. I don’t think this is essential to the smooth running of things.”
Dr. Carmen Pantiș added that patients in ATI are monitored individually, with the help of the devices and medical devices they are connected to. And this data and information is centralized and tracked in real time on some monitors. “We have centralized monitoring. At any moment we know what is happening with the patient. We monitor his vital functions, we know if his blood pressure has increased, if his saturation has decreased, if there is a rhythm disturbance, if an event occurs, it is noticed immediately. I don’t need to physically see the patient to know if he is well or not. It’s not the image that’s important, it’s the monitoring.”
Hospital manager: “We must respect patients’ right to privacy”
“The patients admitted to the ATI wards are, most of them, sedated, intubated, unconscious, some only with diapers on. Or maybe just with a thin, transparent robe. Obviously, such an image cannot fit on anyone’s hands”, Dr. Florin Roșu, the manager of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Iasi, also stated for “Adevărul”. “We must respect these people’s right to privacy, their right to live their illness with dignity. If those moments when resuscitating a patient were to be recorded on video, all the commotion in the ATI during those moments, believe me is something no one wants to see. You can’t risk those images ending up in the public space. I do not agree with the introduction of surveillance cameras in ATI. Video recordings have nothing to look for here. It is a very sensitive, very delicate subject”, director Florin Roșu also said.
In the ATI section of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Iasi, like everywhere else, there is a panel, a central unit, a monitor on which the parameters of each patient connected to the devices are displayed. “And the moment an alarm goes off, we know exactly who the patient is and where their bed is”explains Dr. Florin Roșu. The central unit is also located in the ATI section, in the reception area. “Where the on-call doctors are. These units are equipped with recording systems so that if any problem occurs we can analyze the condition PATIENT at a certain moment”.
