If a hospital learns that hackers breached your medical records, federal law requires that it inform you. If the same hospital learns you may have been exposed to a deadly pathogen, it usually doesn’t have to say a thing.
That’s because hospitals don’t have a legal obligation to tell patients about the presence of pathogens — even antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These so-called superbugs are increasingly common, and are so deadly that Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), has described them as “nightmare bacteria.” Recent outbreaks, linked to contaminated endoscopes at UCLA and other hospitals, are bringing this policy gap to the fore.
