Johns Hopkins worked to assure confidentiality
November 1, 2000 3 minutes read
Johns Hopkins worked to assure confidentiality
These are excerpts from the letter sent to staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital on Aug. 10, 2000, by Edward Miller, MD, dean of the medical faculty and chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Ronald Peterson, president of the hospital.
"In the next few weeks, people all over the United States will see advertisements for HOPKINS 24/7, a six-hour, prime time, ABC News mini-series focused exclusively on Johns Hopkins Medicine and filmed here, virtually around the clock, over a three-month period last Fall. Although we will not see the series until it airs, in accordance with ABC News practices, we have seen some of the promotional materials. The portrayal of Hopkins is by many accounts heroic, and we’re extremely enthusiastic about the documentary. . . .
"Because of the exceptional access ABC News was given to our educational, research and clinical activities, we also want to tell you why we granted such unhindered access, what we hoped to achieve and how we managed some of the risk we knew this project might carry. First and foremost, you should know that even though we had no right of review of what ABC taped, we — and ABC — were exquisitely sensitive to issues related to patient privacy and confidentiality. As you watch the programs, keep in mind that we insisted upon and secured absolute protection of our patients’ privacy at all times. We required ABC to obtain written consent from any patient appearing in the broadcast, or in the 10 additional hours of programming that will appear on the Discovery Health cable channel sometime next year.
"ABC News selected Hopkins, out of a field of five other academic medical centers, to become the centerpiece of efforts to explore the work and culture’ of academic medicine in America because of our reputation for advancing knowledge and bringing it quickly to the bedside, our world-class clinicians and scientists, our commitment to our community, our stellar nursing and ancillary services, and the credibility that Hopkins Medicine can bring to medical statesmanship on a national and even international scale.
"As for the reasons we agreed to join with ABC in this project, we believe that participation carries the potential to give Hopkins, and academic medicine, a colossal platform for advocacy. We have the qualities and the confidence to let the world see what we do, and to leverage what people see to explain better medicine’s challenges and our solutions. It’s almost certain that when we see the series on television, there will be things that — had we had any control — we would have wanted to be portrayed differently. But from what we’ve seen so far, and heard from the ABC producers, the documentary appears to show very dramatically and accurately our concern for issues critically important to us: urban health initiatives that improve the health of our community; lack of health insurance coverage for the working poor and indigent; continued and increased public and private funding for teaching and research; the rigors of training doctors who can meet the demands of the 21st Century, and the challenges of delivering on the public’s demand for medical miracles in a financially
constrained environment."
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