The Germanwings co-pilot and patient privacy laws
It seems that several doctors seen by Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz before his suicidal/homicidal crash felt that he should be grounded, but their hands were tied by strict doctor/patient privacy laws in Germany:
…[Lubitz] had seen seven doctors within the month before the March 24 crash, including three appointments with a psychiatrist.
Robin says that some of the doctors felt Lubitz was psychologically unstable, and some felt he was unfit to fly, but “unfortunately that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements.”
In Germany, doctors risk prison if they disclose information about their patients to anyone unless there is evidence they intend to commit a serious crime or harm themselves.
I understand the problem here, because we don’t want to make it so that pilots are afraid to go for help when they need it, out of fear they’d lose their jobs. On the other hand, the situation as reported above is absurd. An unstable pilot (or bus driver, for that matter, or anyone whose job involves carrying a lot of passengers and being responsible for their safety) does not have to talk about wanting to commit a specific crime or to kill him/herself to be extremely dangerous to the health and the lives of enormous numbers of people. The threshhold for reporting that unfitness and instability should be less than the standard for others.
In addition, prison as a penalty for doctors reporting without enough evidence has a tremendously chilling effect on the likelihood of doing so, leading almost inevitably to preventable tragedies like the one that occurred for Lubitz’s passengers and their families.
This is a perfect example of a specific German stupidity: they never are able to find a reasonable compromiss, being outright self-righteous and ideologically blinded, whatever ideology they embrass. (My wife, who is ethnically German and was upbrought in almost exclusively German community, usually has even more harsh words on this matter.)
In the U.S. the Doctors who perform the required medical exams are licensed to do so by the FAA. Of course that does not prevent pilots from seeing other Doctors, and frankly the required exams have a lot in common with TSA performance. Done for show. Only the EKG data goes by wire directly to the FAA; all other parts of the exam are subject to local interpretation.
I am surprised that this was the case in Germany. I thought that throughout Europe, the medical profession worked for the state; and would be expected to share information with the people who paid them.
It ought to be easy to identify professions that especially require an stable person. Doctors dealing with these patients ought to be able to report them to a special board that would further investigate and make a decision about fitness for the job. This would prevent the ruinaton of a person’s career on the basis of one doctor’s report.
You can’t legislate good judgment, nor insight.
ONE thing that the German ‘system’ might do is have — rather like the American credit rating firms — a tick count for ‘credit shopping’ — ‘doctor hunting.’
The way it works — at least in America — is that the mere act of applying for credit is noted — yea or nay results are a separate metric.
What this means in socialized medicine: a fellow that HAS TO HAVE medical clearance that ‘shops doctors’ gets ‘health points’ ticked on his ‘ticket.’
And like golf scores, a high figure is for losers.
EVEN WITHOUT FURTHER COMMENTARY — the mere fact that our boy was seeing so MANY doctors in so short a time — should’ve caused him to be put on suspended leave — paid leave — and triggered a sanctioned confab of exactly those doctors who he’d consulted with.
Something like this was also triggered by American health care reforms – – when prescription meds were first digitally recorded. It became quickly apparent that MANY old gals were using multiple physicians to feed their ‘habits’ on the Federal dime. They’d become addicted to this or that — typically — anti-depressant.
The secondary collegial conference system and the metric to trigger it ought not to be public knowledge.
It should be set to ‘trip’ to ‘catch’ only the extreme percentile of individuals who are in a position to inflict mass damage:
pilots
railroad engineers
bus drivers
and such.
In the case at hand, IIRC, the man had failing eyesight — failing by the standards of airline pilots, that is.
It’s not as if he couldn’t have a heck of a career in non-pilot roles, where corrective lenses are entirely acceptable.
Union shop steward?
This young pilot was, IMHO, a one off.
All pilots (at least everyone I ever met) are fearful of losing the ability to pass their physicals. In 38 years of flying I never met anyone that I considered to be a head case or without a healthy self preservation instinct. (Most professional pilots are more like Sully Sullenberger than like Lubitz.) Our greatest fear was making the pilot error that resulted in a fatal crash. My company did short interviews each year to evaluate the pilot’s mental state. Additionally, we were observed twice annually during stressful check rides by very experienced pilots who were looking for problems. Pilots interact on every flight with their fellow crew members who are also alert for problems. My company had a professional standards committee where any problems observed by a fellow crew member could be reported and acted upon. In a well-run airline there are many filters to identify pilots with problems. I don’t know how Lufthansa operates in these areas. Maybe they are not that observant or maybe this is one that slipped through the cracks in spite of the filters.
That this pilot was suicidal just does not fit the profile of the population of airline pilots I’m familiar with. That he would opt to kill his fellow employees and a plane load of passengers while committing suicide is a stain on the honor of the professional airline pilots that is deeply repugnant to me. He must also have hated his parents with a passion. He has dishonored his family in the worst possible way.
Like James Holmes of the Littleton, CO theater massacre, his problems were detected before he acted, but the healthcare practitioners failed to alert anyone who could have prevented either of the tragedies. Where does the right to privacy end? Maybe the professions of pilot, policeman, bus driver, train engineer, surgeon, and others need to be held to a different standard. But where do we draw the line?
Do the “strict doctor/patient privacy laws in Germany” also prevent the doctors from informing the airlines that one of their pilots is a walking massive heart attack timebomb about to explode???? If so, what is the point of ever having ANY kind of pilot physicals?????
The government’s regulations are paramount. Even if nobody uses it for anything good. It’s the pyramidal hierarchy, the ponzi scheme, that matters.
The German privacy laws are based in what the 3rd Reich did with doctors (ever heard of “life not worth living”? Wiesenthal wrote a book about it.) The German concern for medical privacy is historically valid.
mysterian:
Oh, I’m well aware of what they’re based on. But it’s an overcorrection—too far to the other side.