A pair of doctors nonchalantly approaches a patient’s home and, by using a credit card, picks the lock of the door in order to search for anything imperative to solving their patient’s case. Such is a common occurrence on House.  But outside the Hollywood studio world of medical practice, doctors are being warned to not even accept a look into patient’s online social presence.

An article in The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog indicates the British Medical Association explicitly states that “doctors and medical students who receive friend requests from current or former patients should politely refuse.”  The American Medical Association’s policy is a little more lax stating only that those who have an online interaction with their patients should “maintain appropriate boundaries of the patient-physician relationship in according with professional ethical guidelines.” Let’s say a certain patient that is very “friend request” happy adds their doctor and chooses not to apply any privacy settings to their status updates, photos, etc (unaware that the information they divulge in those could cause an ethical dilemma for their new “friend”). The blog article uses the example of a doctor seeing a photo where a pregnant patient is holding a cigarette and a beer. Should the doctor bring this up in their next appointment?

Dr. House would justify the actions of his team’s break-ins that the patient made a mistake of lying (or simply leaving out information), so they must combat that with another transgression. In House’s practice, two wrongs really do make a right. By the end of the episode a patient has usually forgiven the team for the break-in (no charges filed) and also APOLOGIZES for having lied in the beginning. In the real world would a patient be so forgiving? In the example of the pregnant patient, would they apologize to the doctor when questioned about the photo? Or would they take offense when it was their own disregard for privacy that revealed it? How is the doctor in the wrong if the patient ALLOWED the doctor to access that information? A patient’s inability to button up their online presence when they made the initial request to invite their physician into it should not be the doctor’s problem. Now, if a doctor happens upon a photo of a patient online in such a situation, then it gets a little sticky. But in that manner, how would a doctor handle the situation if they had personally seen the pregnant patient smoking in public?

Alas, the indefinite policies with patient information on social media press on; this just being another example of how attempting to remove physicians from the situation seems the best answer. But this is where we should be asking ourselves as medical marketers how we can make it easier for doctors and patients to interact digitally without crossing those ethical boundaries.  If we establish a “virtual office” space, then wouldn’t everything the patient reveals there be considered freely given in a medical setting? Is there a solution that helps doctors keep up on patient’s progress between appointments without opening it up to too much patient disclosure?