QUESTION:
We have gotten into the habit of recording all our Medical Staff meetings to allow us to go back and take notes. We delete the recording afterwards, but some individuals have raised concerns about the recordings existing in the first place. Is this really something we should be worried about?
ANSWER FROM HORTYSPRINGER ATTORNEY HALA MOUZAFFAR:
While the idea of using all the technology available to us to help improve efficiency and accuracy sounds great, unfortunately in the medical staff world something like recording meetings can pose a threat to confidentiality and privilege and put the members of your committees at risk for legal action.
In meetings, we want people to speak openly and freely about peer review and patient care. When we make a recording of those meetings it essentially creates a transcript of everything that was said ‑ both good and bad. The recording captures more than the very brief descriptions of what happened that we typically recommend be documented in meeting minutes. Even though the purpose is only to use the recordings to create meeting minutes, if the recording was ever discovered or got into the wrong hands, every person who talked openly and honestly could be at risk.
We also often hear that same argument, “but we delete the recordings right after we are done with them.” Even if you “delete” recordings locally, it is hard to determine for certain if these recordings are held offsite in servers or the mysterious cloud for some indeterminate amount of time. And unfortunately, in many instances, recordings never truly are deleted and can always be retrieved in some format. Additionally, some hospitals are subject to state laws that require them to keep all documentation related to meetings, meaning that, even if it is possible to delete a video recording, the hospital is not legally permitted to do so.
If you do still insist on recording meetings, I would only record things outside of the scope of peer review and patient care. So, if you’re talking general business matters (e.g., what is the hospital hand washing policy) a recording is fine, but as soon as patient care gets discussed, the recording should be paused.
Hypothetically, recording all your meetings for the purposes of note taking seems like a great idea, but in a risk versus reward analysis, it might not be worth it in the long run.
If you have a quick question about this, e-mail us at info@hortyspringer.com.