Pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is a gold­en rule that ought not to be breached. This from PRO of the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion Dr Kee­gan Bag­gan as West Shore Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal in Co­corite has tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed one of its tech­ni­cians af­ter he post­ed de­tails of the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­di­tion on Face­book.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the mat­ter Bhag­gan said, “Re­gard­less of this per­son not be­ing a mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion we gen­er­al­ly feel that pa­tient health in­for­ma­tion, pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is a gold­en rule to be ad­hered to at all times and we would not con­done such breach­es in pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty es­pe­cial­ly from our mem­bers. Ide­al­ly, we would hope that oth­ers will hold to sim­i­lar stan­dards.”

West Shore has al­so launched a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had checked him­self in­to the fa­cil­i­ty on Fri­day af­ter com­plain­ing of feel­ing “dis­com­fort.”

He has since had tests fol­lowed by a pro­ce­dure to clear blocked ar­ter­ies. The Prime Min­is­ter was dis­charged yes­ter­day morn­ing.

When the PM was ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal, the tech­ni­cian, in a Face­book post had com­plained that he had been “crawl­ing through traf­fic on his way home.”

How­ev­er, the tech­ni­cian said he was called back to the hos­pi­tal to “take care of him.” In re­ply to the tech­ni­cian’s post, one per­son replied, “If that was me I would have sab­o­tage my own car.”

But the tech­ni­cian replied, “Na. I have to look af­ter every­one equal­ly. I am not a politi­cian.”

The tech­ni­cian was then asked whether Row­ley was feel­ing bet­ter to which the tech­ni­cian said the PM was “pain-free when he left work.”

In re­sponse to the posts on Face­book, West Shore yes­ter­day said that it has a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy when it comes to breach­ing pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

“It was brought to the at­ten­tion of West Shore Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal, Ad­vanced Car­dio­vas­cu­lar In­sti­tute (ACI) and Car­dio­vas­cu­lar As­so­ciates LTD (CVA) that state­ments with ref­er­ence to a pa­tient were be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, made al­leged­ly by a car­diac tech­nol­o­gist iden­ti­fied as an em­ploy­ee of Car­dio­vas­cu­lar As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed and a part-time in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor for ACI. The tech­ni­cian so iden­ti­fied is not a med­ical doc­tor,” West Shore said.

It added that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter was im­me­di­ate­ly ini­ti­at­ed by its com­pa­nies, and will be “con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with full due process.”

Fol­low­ing which ac­tion deemed nec­es­sary and ap­pro­pri­ate will be tak­en, the hos­pi­tal said.

It al­so not­ed that un­til this process is con­clud­ed, the tech­ni­cian will not be asked to pro­vide any ser­vices at West Shore or for ACI.

“Our three com­pa­nies are gov­erned by a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy re­gard­ing breach­es of pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. All staff mem­bers and in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors are re­quired to sign agree­ments to keep pa­tient in­for­ma­tion in the strictest con­fi­dence.

“West Shore, ACI and CVA have a long and proud track-record of ad­her­ing to the high­est stan­dards in pa­tient care, in­clu­sive of main­tain­ing ab­solute pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty,” West Shore added.

The state­ments by the hos­pi­tal al­so gen­er­at­ed sev­er­al com­ments on Face­book. One per­son said:“This is why we need ef­fec­tive boards and com­mis­sions to gov­ern these pro­fes­sions. If this was in the US, this tech­ni­cian would be sum­mar­i­ly sus­pend­ed and will not be able to work in any pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ty (for any in­sti­tu­tion).

“Even if he had his own busi­ness, it would be shut down.”

An­oth­er per­son who al­so com­ment­ed said con­tract em­ploy­ment are usu­al­ly not treat­ed right and of­ten dis­grun­tled with no place to take their con­cerns.

“This does not make it right but un­der­stand­ing why these things hap­pen is equal­ly im­por­tant. There is a dri­ve for con­tract em­ploy­ment but per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment holds ppl ac­count­able and sets un­der­ly­ing prin­ci­ples.

“We must get to the root of the prob­lem..it does not on­ly hap­pen here. How­ev­er pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is of ut­most im­por­tance,” the per­son added.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd al­so reached out to Dr Les­ley Roberts of the Med­ical Board who said she could not com­ment on the mat­ter as she was un­aware of the de­tails.

Checks on Face­book showed that the tech­ni­cian in ques­tion re­moved his post on Face­book.