Stories about the health of celebrities regularly hit the front pages and it can lead to confidentiality dilemmas for the doctors and other healthcare staff providing care and treatment.
Famous names, such as the footballer, John Hartson or the late Jade Goody may decide to comment publicly about their illness. However, this does not mean that a doctor can comment freely about a famous patient’s treatment or prognosis, even when many of the details are already in the public domain.
Indeed, even confirming to the media that a certain celebrity is a patient, without their explicit permission, is a breach of confidentiality.
When asked for details about a celebrity patient, hospital doctors should always act in his or her best interests and follow the GMC’s guidance booklet Confidentiality protecting and providing information (2004), which says information about patients can only be disclosed with their expressed consent.
If a patient has died, the GMC makes clear a doctor’s duty of confidentiality towards them continues. In addition, in 1997, the GMC was prompted by the media attention surrounding cases such as Mandy Allwood (the woman who was pregnant with eight foetuses), to remind doctors about their duty of confidentiality when dealing with the media. It stated:
1. Always treat as confidential, any information you learn in a professional capacity, whether or not the information is in the public domain.
2. Always obtain explicit prior consent from patients if they will be identifiable from the details you disclose.
3. Whenever you can, obtain such consent even when you do not intend to disclose a patient’s identity.
4. Remember that patients can be identified from information other than names and addresses: a combination of details such as a patient’s condition or disease, their age or occupation, the area they live in, their medical history, or the size of their family, can lead to individuals being identified.
In general, the MDU’s advice would be to think very carefully before you to talk to the media about a celebrity patient, even with the patient’s apparent consent. If patient asks you to issue a formal statement on their behalf, they would need to agree the content with you.
However, agreeing to be interviewed carries significant pitfalls in terms of patient consent. While you might agree general areas of discussion with the patient, neither you nor the patient can be certain what you might be asked.
However cautious you may be, you may inadvertently reveal details that the patient did not consent to being released, such as aspects of the celebrity’s medical history that are relevant to their current treatment.
While some journalists may seek to persuade you otherwise, disclosure of information about a celebrity patient without their consent - if they are unconscious for example - would be difficult to justify. Such disclosures are generally made only in the public interest in exceptional cases where “the benefits to an individual or society of the disclosure outweigh the public and the patient’s interest in keeping the information confidential.” Ultimately, the public interest can only be determined by the courts.
However, it almost goes without saying that the public interest is not the same as what interests the public.
If, on balance, you think it’s advisable not to comment about a celebrity patient to the media, you may prefer to explain that you are unable to comment because of the duty of confidentiality you owe to all your patients. In the MDU’s experience, many journalists will respect a doctor’s decision not to speak about a patient if they understand the reason.
Your NHS trust should have a clear protocol governing the disclosure of patient information to other organisations and most hospitals now have a press office that can co-ordinate any response to the media, such as a condition statement.
Doctors can also contact the MDU press office for advice if they are unsure how to respond to a press query about a patient.
