Often on a doctor show I watch (House) on tv the doctors go to the patient’s residence to look for a possible environmental cause for the disease they’re treating. It’s not made clear if the patient has given permission for this visit.
I’m wondering if doctors can do an inspection of a private residence if the patient is unable (or even unwilling?) to give permission and without getting a judges okay.
So, I guess this is actually a two-sided question. To make it simpler, I’ll make it one:
Under what circumstances can doctors or medical staff search a patient’s home to look for possible cause of disease?
Extra points: What if they find no clue to what they’re looking for, but do find something illegal, as in illicit drugs?
Peace,
mangeorge
On the show, it is usually pretty clear that they are breaking into the patient’s home without permission. Occasionally they tell the patient about it, and the patient will get a little annoyed but ends up looking at the bigger picture and not doing anything about it. In real life, the patient could and almost certainly would press charges of burglary.
Also, on the show, when they find something illegal, they are more often amused than outraged. The characters on the show have more than their share of things to hide, so they wouldn’t turn in the patient unless it was something beyond the pale, like child molestation or a terrorist cell. Drugs and stolen cash? All in a day’s work.
Shows you what happens when you don’t pay attention, and/or do jump up too often.
But I wonder about the irl situation. If it were about a dangerous and infectuous disease, I would assume somebody could investigate. Hospitals do have legal departments. I guess they’d make the arraingements
BTW; I like the show. That one, and Boston Legal. No apologies. 
Well, according to the guy from Polite Dissent (real life doctor, who analyzes the medical aspect of House and picks lotsa nits), that peculiar aspect of the show is 100% bogus. He reckons the only people who’d ever consider such a thing would be guys from the CDC, and evidently if the CDC is getting involved, the midden has pretty much hit the windmill already…
Besides, IANAD, but I’d say regular doctors wouldn’t have much need for B&E - in the real world, precious few diseases go from admission to multiple organ failure to losing a kidney through an ear to death in 48h as they do on the show. Plenty of time to perform tests, and precious few cases of “right medicine, he’s on his feet tomorrow, wrong medicine, he’s dead in a minute” either.
Even should someone be poisoned by something in their homes, staying in the hospital’s carefuly monitored & sanitized environment solves the problem on a short term basis. Then you find what’s poisoning the guy, and then you try and figure out how/where he might have come in contact with the stuff. At least, that’s how I imagine things are done, again, IANAD
Maybe the appropriate licensing authorties would FINALLY pull freakin’ House’s license to practice?
Seriously, if this went on in real life you’d need a DA with a real good sense of humor. You could definitely pull some time for it if he didn’t have one.
They need to set the show where poster QtM works, so that the searches would actually be legal…
I suppose a Doper EMT can tell us what might happen if a patient collapsed in his home after calling 911. That probably would give presumed permission to enter, and if there were a half-empty bottle of pills lying next to the person, to examine the bottle for whatever he might have ingested. Does it also imply permission to scope out the medicine cabinet/bedside tables for other possible sources of poison/OD? Probably not, and if they find my stash of heroin and call the cops, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be convicted for possession.
What if I collapse on the street and they bring me into the ER? Can they go through my purse to see what I’m holding, if I can’t speak up and tell them not to? I imagine they can, because they’d be looking for ID to call my next of kin anyway, right?
Pull his license for illegal drug use? In the spirit of the show, this would be a serious loss. If for his unorthodox methods, I don’t know. What doctors can and cannot do is very dependent upon the results of those actions. If I get desperately ill, I want to go on the show and have House and his crew take care of me.
But if I’m accused of doing something really bad (ie break into a patient’s home) and go to trial, I want Alan Shore as my lawyer. 
Hmmm. I should write a letter!
I don’t know if there’s any laws pertaining to this, but it certainly does happen. It happens on non-OD calls as well if the person has altered mental status and there’s no body else to tell us about medications or anything like that.
I’ve never actually found any drugs all by myself in someone’s house. I have, however, found drugs and paraphernalia on patients. In some cases it gets turned over to the cops and people get charged. In other cases the cops destroy it or we destroy it.
Unless you have a critical medical problem, we’ll probably look for your wallet/ID and see if you have any medications on you.
St. Urho
Paramedic
I asked this very thing not long ago:
Sigmagirl wrote:
On the show, it is usually pretty clear that they are breaking into the patient’s home without permission. Occasionally they tell the patient about it, and the patient will get a little annoyed but ends up looking at the bigger picture and not doing anything about it. In real life, the patient could and almost certainly would press charges of burglary.
Also, on the show, when they find something illegal, they are more often amused than outraged. The characters on the show have more than their share of things to hide, so they wouldn’t turn in the patient unless it was something beyond the pale, like child molestation or a terrorist cell. Drugs and stolen cash? All in a day’s work.
Is there any way a member of a hospital’s medical staff could obain a search warrant? I find it hard to believe that I could get one to check out my neighbors house because I had seen them taking my morning paper.
My understanding is that the BofRs limits on searchs is limited to governmental organizations. What the “civilian” population may or may not do is determined by state and federal laws.
If they did find something incriminating, would be admisiable as evidence? Could it be used as probable cause for the police to obtain a warrant and do their own search?
You sure did!
I’ve pretty much given up on “search”.