What's most important these days is the data was cleaned first, and was proactively given out to police which was used indirectly to ward off future crime. All it took was police presence.<p>They didn't need to indiscriminately take patient records out of their backend systems or monitor the hospitals networks and reverse engineer http and packets. They didn't need to target individuals who are repeat offenders or violate any privacy consideratio.<p>I'd say 150 years ago the nurse was telling the sheriff the boys keep getting too roudy at the saloon, too.
A related, and well studied, debate in medicine was about the right of privacy for inmates in a correctional institute. Until the final version of HIPAA inmate health information was not considered protected like for the general population.<p>Once upon a time ago it was intensely debated whether the effect of disclosures of drug or weapon possession to prison administration would negatively affect prisoner cooperation and the quality of healthcare. Inmates were known for storing weapons or drugs in their rectum, physicians worried that if an X-Ray were to reveal such objects and if they were required to disclose them that inmates would stop accepting X-Rays and general health would decline.<p>The general consensus of studies that examined this issue showed that this did not in fact happen[1]. It was found that as long as only things that risk the health of the general population (i.e. drugs don't need to be reported but weapons do) were reported there were no adverse effects.<p>Extrapolating to the general population, one could conclude that this hospital's practices wouldn't discourage people from going to the hospital. Criminals that would be discouraged by this policy would likely not be going to the ER prior to its implementation (similar to how inmates with knives in their rectum still won't go to a physician despite HIPAA protection) because they're afraid of being caught doing something illegal. You can't really do anything for this subset of the population however you can help the majority by sharing this information with the police while causing minimal (or no) harm to any individual patient.<p>[1] I read this in "Doing Right" by Hebert, PC. In the book they cited a study but I no longer have it, if someone really wants this reference I can go hunt for it. I wouldn't recommend buying this book as it's ridiculously overpriced.
A good example of data-sharing being put to productive use. Apparently with an 3200% ROI. Not bad.<p>We all know a lot of crimes go unrelated but I never thought certain classes of crimes would be so significantly under-represented.
Bad idea, people won't go to the hospital. Reminds me of the story about the CIA going undercover as polio vaccinators in Pakistan and now legitimate vaccinators are being chased off and polio rates are increasing.
How long are you able to report a crime after the fact?<p>I remember being hit by a car on my bike (a famously under-reported incident), but both myself and my girlfriend physically/emotionally were in rough shape all day. We forgot to report it, then it ended up slipping out of our minds.<p>This is a challenging problem to solve with technology, similar to getting patients to take their daily medication on time.
This is interesting. Hospitals in Austria are actually required by law to report such incidents as far as I know. The same is true for results of domestic violence.
i wonder whats the modus operandi around this ?<p>let me explain - in India, it is mandatory for hospitals to reports all "unnatural" incidents to the police - which means crime, traffic accidents, etc. Now because of the already understaffed police and/or corruption in the force itself, what happens is that the hospital tends to withold critical care until the police report is completed. In recent times, this has snowballed into a huge controversy and caused some other laws being passed to ensure care first.<p>Now here's the issue - this is still a gray area. Let's say you are a newly minted doctor working in the hospital and a patient comes in with several injuries and who tells you that there is a gang incident in a pub and likely many people are injured. What is the <i>mandated process</i> - do you have to make a police report first, or do you provide medical care first ? Doing either can result in the doctor being blamed for something or other.<p>Or is there a dedicated "liason" whose job is to do the reporting and leave the care to the doctors. Which would mean staffing for a role like that would be difficult in a non-publicly funded medical institution.
Unintended side-effect:<p>When two gangs fight and people get injured but don't want the police to know about the location of the fight (an illegal clubhouse?), wounds are either ignored or stitched up by backalley doctors.
<i>So the hospital started sharing its information with the police, after removing names and other identifying information.</i><p>Strange, I thought they were obligated to call the cops when someone with obvious such injuries went to the hospital. You know, if you have a black eye, broken nose and a stab wound, "I fell from the stairs" probably not gonna do it.
Better idea - save the data to a server, make an API (free), and let engineershelp visualize where the violence is occuring / predict where it will occur based on date/time
Whatever. Nothing special.<p>The whole thing of hospitals reporting violence police sounds is a gangster movie cliche: someone gets shot and his friends rush him to a disgraced dentist who removes the bullet on the kitchen table with a splash of whiskey and a dirty switchblade.