Posted on 06/12/2008 4:59:00 PM PDT by markomalley
Yes there is. I worked in a Dr’s office for 2 years and in a hospital for 17.
Nah, I worked for docs for 2 years and we never asked to see ID, only insurance cards. Not even when they paid by check. We would not - legally *could* not - see a minor alone **unless it was in regards to reproductive health**. Not necessarily even birth control but a girl coming in for a Pap and routine check, or a guy coming in for an STD test. Mom or dad could send in a note however, giving us permission to treat their child, usually when grandma or aunt was bringing them in.
We had a few teens come in for various ailments without parent or note and in those cases we would call mom or dad and two of us would have to verify over the phone that we could see and treat the kid, then we’d note ‘S/W Mom on the phone, verbal permission to see patient’ on the notes for that visit. We never photocopied a single driver’s license though.
Exactly. We knew our patients and their families because it was a smallish town and we had several generations of family that all came to our docs. So while *we* would have known that the lady out there wasn’t really Janey’s mom, I can see it would be much easier in a walk in medical facility or clinic, where they don’t have an ongoing relationship with the patients and have never laid eyes on them before and probably never will again.
As an aside, I was thinking of the last few times I had to do an ER run for my kids (suspected appendicitis, eye injury) and while they asked for my insurance card and I had to sign paperwork, they never asked for my driver’s license. I could have sent the neighbor in with my card and said ‘Sign my name’ and they never would have known. Signing someone else’s name to anything like that makes the signer legally responsible for their duplicity and absolves the facility of responsibility for it.
“What is really sad is that the teen could not tell her own mom what was wrong.”
BINGO! I’m guessing that would’ve solved a lot of problems. Not only as far as taking away the boyfriend’s mom’s ability to coerce their daughter, but in being able to hopefully protect her from the emotional harm she is now dealing with.
While I would personally prefer to see clinics such as this shut down altogether, I would hope that in the future this clinic makes more of an effort to confirm the identity of those bringing children in for these procedures so as to comply with the laws on the books.
In this case, it was a boyfriend’s mom. It has been shown though in the past that pedophiles have done the same thing - lying and saying they were a father when they were most definitely not...
ping to read later.
I agree. I am astonished that this is only a misdemeanor. It really should be a felony, on so many different bases.
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