Patient Conditions
If you are a reporter looking for a condition of a patient, please call the hospital page operator at 617-667-4700; ask for pager #33880, to be connected to the Media Relations staff member on call.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of our patients and their medical information as mandated by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). To help ensure those rights, we have adopted the following definitions for reporting patient conditions to the media. They have been approved by the American Hospital Association, are widely used by hospitals nationwide and are familiar to most journalists.
- You must have the patient's full name to request information.
- We will only provide one-word descriptions about a patient's condition: “undetermined,” “good,” “fair,” “serious” or “critical.” Please note “stable” is not used.
- We will acknowledge the death of a patient, but only after next-of-kin have been notified.