chibamSenior Contributor
Strange people having access to our medical details?
The other day my mum told me about a recent experience she had at her medical center. She'd just come out from a routine doctor's appointment when the reception staff told her that some woman wanted a word with her. My mum went off somewhere private with this woman and this woman started asking my mum questions about the medications she was on. Apparently this woman had a list of the meds she's on already on hand.
What the meeting was all about, my mum has no idea as apparently the woman had an accent as thick as molasses and my mum couldn't really understand her. But mum seems to think the woman was asking about whether she had ever tried differant brands for her medication.
Subsequent to this, my mum has been back to the reception staff at the clinic to try and get answers about what this meeting was all about. To hear her tell it, it sounds like the clinic staff (some of whom my mum has known well for years) were being really evasive about the woman's true nature. They told my mum that the meeting was "nothing to be worried about" because the woman was a qualified pharmacist (I should clarify that there's no pharmacy located inside the building, so there's no apparent reason why a pharmacist would be in there), and that it had been consented to by her GP. But apart from that, they didn't seem to be very forthcoming about exactly why the woman had wanted to talk to my mum.
From what my mum has been able to tell me, my main theory is that this woman was from a pharmaceutical company conducting market research. But to be perfectly honest neither I nor my mum really know what it was all about.
What really worries me about this story is the fact that this stranger already had my mum's medical records before my mum ever even met this woman. I was always under the impression that our medical records are our property and that no one is aloud to access them without our consent unless they have a warrant. Even if our doctor approves, he or she, as I understand it, doesn't have the legal right to grant strangers access to our medical files.
Has anyone else had a similar experience to this?
