Op-Ed: Break a Confidence? Never. Well, Hardly Ever.

May 30, 2007

Anyone who has ever worked in a hospital can attest that doctors are purveyors of information: dry facts, clinical data, medical wisdom. When I was an intern, my hospital had a separate computer system for laboratory results, another for vital signs and nursing notes, and another for medical records. Clinical medicine, it seemed then, wasn’t about patient care as much as about data management. (New York Times)