Did you know?!: Hospital phone calls with patients recorded

A friend was in hospital in America, so I gave a call and before an operator picked up I got the standard "Your call may be recorded for quality assurance." When the operator came on I asked her about the recording, and she said that every call was recorded. "Even while talking to the patient?" "Yes, the entire call". I informed her that that was disgusting, and she agreed, but laughed it away.

So....just surmising here....any discussion of a malpractice case (although I hope lawyers would be savvy not to talk about the case on a phone connection to a patient's room) with friends or relatives, recorded. Discussions of illnesses, treatment by hospital staff, complaining about this, that, or the other, even sports team preferences and private conversations with loved ones, recorded.

I have no idea if this is true of every hospital, but the one I phoned was a major and well known hospital.

Many won't be surprised by this. I still was.

a reply to: Aleister

Eh it is mildly surprising to me but not shocking mate. SnF and Thanks for the heads up however.

At this point IMO it is safe to assume every single phone call you make anywhere is recorded in full by some entity be it government or corporate.

One of the many stays that my mom had at the hospital before she died last February, we had something strange happen.
I went to her room and she started whispering to me saying that the nurses was listening to her. She kept hearing the two-way mic's come on. I thought it was just the meds, but shortly after I hear it. The speaker was on the wall. I asked my mom if the doc's and nurses were treating her good and she shook her head no. She whispered to me and my dad that one of the nurses was hateful. Less than a minute later a different nurse cam in and started asking questions about it. I knew right then and there that everything said in a hospital is listened to. The director of the hospital approached us as we were leaving and she asked if we had any complaints. I said, YEAH. Our privacy has been invaded and I don't appreciate it. If a nurse or anyone else here mistreats my mom and I find out about it, you'll be the third person I notify.

There is no privacy in public anymore. Always consider that you are being watched and recorded.

a reply to: Fylgje

Thanks, and you had a very odd experience there. Many people grew up to trust doctors and hospitals as much as the police and military. There was probably a "doctors are your friend" TV show running every year most people are alive. "Grey's Anatomy", "Ben Casey", "Dr. Kildare", the soap "General Hospital", "E.R.", "Chicago Hope", that Doctor Quinn medicine woman show, individual doctors on other TV series' that we've grown to love and trust (Bones McCoy and the holographic doctor on Star Trek come to mind) and likely many more that aren't popping in my memory right now.

I've never heard one of them tell us that every phone call we make into a hospital is recorded.

So, who has access? Does anyone here work in a hospital that can give some personal knowledge (mine is based totally on that one phone call). Thanks.

a reply to: lightedhype

Well, this is a bit different. The law in the U.S. is that medical records are sealed unless the patient asks for them to be shared. If all the phone calls to a patient's room are recorded, and if a doctor calls to discuss the case, how many people have access to the recording? Is the permission to record their conversations included in forms (or small print) that the patient signs when they come into the facility?