The practice existing in the detention and closed type prison facilities, whereby a prisoner
has to address non-medical personnel for an appointment of consultation with doctor remains problematic; in most cases, a doctor examines a patient and provides consultation
in a cell. This contradicts the principle of confidentiality as the complaints of the prisoner
are thereby also communicated to other prisoners and non-medical personnel.309 Except
for emergencies, a medical examination and consultation should be conducted separately
in a doctor’s office with due respect for confidentiality.310 Furthermore, medical manipulations are not conducted in a confidential environment. For instance, according to the
prisoners in penitentiary establishment no. 2, injections, taking blood for tests and other
medical procedures are usually done in a guard’s room on the residential floor, in the
presence of the non-medical personnel on duty, which again violates the principle of confidentiality of medical services.
The principle of confidentiality is also violated by Article 24.2 of the Imprisonment Code,311
under which upon admission to a penitentiary institution, an remand/convicted person
shall undergo a medical examination and the relevant report shall be prepared and kept
in his/her personal file.
The maintenance of medical documentation in penitentiary establishments remains a
problem. It should be mentioned that, in general, the unity of medical notes of prisoners
is not observed and it creates the danger of losing the medical documents. In penitentiary
establishment no. 3, in the medical note on convict G.G. son of Guram, born on 1985,
there was a medical document that belonged to another person having the same name
and surname – G.G. son of Ghvtiso, born on 1954. Furthermore, in a number of cases,
there are no references in the recordings such as the name of the doctor who provided
consultation to a prisoner, the date of giving the consultation or diagnosis.
According to Order no. 198/n of the Minister of Health, Labour and Social Affairs of Georgia, dated 5 July 2002, approving the Procedure of Storing Medical Records in Medical Establishments, all completed medical documentation should be stored in medical archive
of the given medical establishment.
During the visit of the Division of Medical Regulation to penitentiary establishment no.
5312, the room arranged for medical archive was inspected and it has turned out that the
major requirements for keeping archives are not observed, viz., temperature, humidity,
and fire extinguishing devices.
The visit of the Division of Medical Regulation to penitentiary establishment no. 7313 revealed that a medical archive room was not there. The piles of old, so-called archived
documents are placed on two small open shelves in the medical unit. Besides the fact that
the requirements for keeping archives are not observed in the room, the documentation
is not archived according to the requisite form and not organised in an alphabetical order
309 Para. 51, Extracts from the general reports of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and
Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT/Inf (93)12).
310 Ibid., para. 35.
311 Ibid., paras. 50-51.
312 20 October 2016.
313 03.10.2016.
NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM (NPM), 2016
145
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