News :: GLBT
Lawsuit alleges wrongful disclosure of HIV status by Ethan Jacobs
associate editorThursday May 15, 2008 A former patient of Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center filed suit against the hospital May 12, alleging that medical staff wrongfully disclosed his HIV status to his employer. The former patient, who is referred to in court documents as John Doe, filed suit in Suffolk Superior Court asking both for monetary damages and for an order mandating that the hospital enforce stricter guidelines and provide comprehensive staff training on the state’s HIV confidentiality laws.
Both Doe and his attorney, David Nielson, declined to provide Doe’s real name to Bay Windows, saying Doe did not want to make any further disclosures of his HIV status.
Doe, a 42-year-old Boston man who works for a well-known company in the hospitality industry, said he was diagnosed about a year before the alleged disclosure took place in 2005, and in that year the only people who knew he was HIV-positive were his partner and his two doctors. On May 18, 2005 Doe said he had a medical emergency on the job that at the time appeared to be a heart attack or a stroke. An ambulance rushed to him to St. Elizabeth’s, and he said when he entered the emergency room he disclosed his HIV status to medical personnel and asked them not to reveal his status to anyone who might visit him. Massachusetts law mandates that health care providers must obtain a patient’s written informed consent to reveal his or her HIV status to a third party.
Doe said that while he was in the emergency room his supervisor arrived, and he overheard a conversation in which one of the doctors at the hospital told the supervisor Doe had HIV. When Doe asked the doctor whether she had disclosed his status she initially denied it, but later that day she admitted she had done so, mistaking his supervisor for a neurologist.
"It was surreal. I was also pretty sick at the time, too. There were a lot of emotions going on. She left me there and I remembered screaming and yelling for my partner, and I actually had to throw an IV pole to get someone’s attention," said Doe.
He said the disclosure left him with crippling anxiety and depression, and he was out of work for about seven months. When he returned he had lost status at his job as a result of the disclosure, he said. Doe declined to give more specifics, saying more detail would identify him to his employer. Doe said he has no plans to sue his employer for discrimination based on HIV status.
Karen Kennedy, a spokesperson for St. Elizabeth’s, declined to comment on the suit.
"We have not been served any papers, but be that as it may we won’t be commenting on this assuming that it is an active suit," said Kennedy.
Ben Klein, director of the AIDS Law Project for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), said that HIV disclosure remains a serious problem.
"It may surprise people to know that these kinds of disclosure of HIV status are still something we get called about fairly regularly. ... We’ve really seen the whole gamut from intentional malice to just sloppiness about where somebody is talking. It’s still common that doctors will talk about HIV status in the waiting room or in the presence of people," said Klein.
He said the penalties for illegal HIV disclosure could become exceedingly high because the law allows plaintiffs to sue for attorney’s fees as well as damages for the disclosure.
Earlier this year the legislature considered several pieces of legislation that would loosen the requirements around HIV disclosure, but Klein said he is confident that those bills are dead for this legislative session. He said the state’s strict HIV laws have been an effective tool for getting people tested because they allow providers to guarantee patients that the results of their HIV test will be secure.
"The ability to tell people that our confidentiality protections are clear and absolute has been" critical to getting people tested, said Klein.
Ethan Jacobs can be reached at ejacobs@baywindows.com
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