Hidden cameras placed in a women's hospital in California to catch a thief secretly filmed nearly 2000 patients in labor and delivery rooms, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
The secret cameras installed at the Women's Center at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, recorded numerous caesarean sections and deliveries over the course of 11 months in 2012, CNN reported.
In many instances the women were partially robed and exposed on operating tables. Court documents state the video clips were stored on desktop computers, many of which were accessible without a password.
"It's horrifying to think that, especially in today's day and age of the ubiquity of videos on the internet, if one of those videos were to get in the wrong hands, there's no controlling it. It takes your own medical care outside your own control," said Allison Goddard, a lawyer representing more than 80 women suing the hospital. "It's the most fundamental breach of privacy."
According to CNN, the hospital allegedly began using the hidden cameras in May 2012 when drugs began to disappear from medical carts. A legal document that the hospital drafted in a case against a doctor acknowledged that "some of the video clips depict patients in their most vulnerable state, under anesthesia, exposed and undergoing medical procedures."
John Cihomsky, Sharp Healthcare's vice president of public relations and communications, admitted that, while the cameras were intended to record individuals in front of medical carts, where the cameras were placed, other patients and medical staff in the operating rooms "were at times visible to the cameras and recorded."
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