Tragedies come in threes. This one is number two.

[Mr Hero]

Warning: Gross

We have a guest that's been staying for a while. This evening we had to deal with a trail of poop leading to the guest's room. The guest was wallowing in her own soiled clothes. We called the cops to get to her to a hospital ASAP. As I understand it, she's being tested for various diseases. Only thing we know about though is HIV. She tested positive.

[RootedPhoenix]

That's....certainly icky, and potentially quite terrifying.

Hope she's getting better now. *hands a plate of cookies to you & the folks who cleaned that up*

[Evannah]

OMG that is gross, sad and disturbing, for everyone involved.

[Headset Hellion]

Wow...just curious how you know she tested positive for HIV?

It's possible that she was trying to clean from heroin or other opiates. Those drugs have a tendency to cause constipation. If an addict tries to quit cold turkey, they could definitely experience severe diarrhea...

In any case, it sounds like she's in a bad place. Hopefully her health improves soon.

[Mr Hero]

We heard back from police that she tested positive for HIV. I believe she was also being tested for ebola, but I haven't heard anything yet.

[greek_jester]

Wow...just curious how you know she tested positive for HIV?

I'm guessing the staff were warned in case they weren't careful enough cleaning up the mess and needed to get checked out.

[Gilhelmi]

I hope you have the proper PPE to clean that up (and tons of bleach and extra )

[fireheart]

I'm guessing the staff were warned in case they weren't careful enough cleaning up the mess and needed to get checked out.

Or in the event that they wound up getting contact through other means (ie guest touched them with unclean hands)

[Sapphire Silk]

We heard back from police that she tested positive for HIV. I believe she was also being tested for ebola, but I haven't heard anything yet.

She doesn't have Ebola. :headbang:

The cops shouldn't have been told she was HIV positive. The hospital broke HIPAA.

[Tama]

The atmosphere of panic is probably the cause of that.

[registerrodeo]

It isn't breaking HIPAA when a potentially infectious disease could possibly have been transmitted. Same as any outbreak of a disease, they have to contact the people who were in close contact so they can be checked. The police officer did right by telling the people who were housing and cleaning up her waste that they should be checked.

[Food Lady]

^ Good to know; I never thought of that. My question is this: how do you know for sure the room is sellable again? I mean, is there any kind of test?

[fireheart]

It isn't breaking HIPAA when a potentially infectious disease could possibly have been transmitted. Same as any outbreak of a disease, they have to contact the people who were in close contact so they can be checked. The police officer did right by telling the people who were housing and cleaning up her waste that they should be checked.

Thank you, you've answered my question.

We have similar laws over here in Aussieland in that you cannot reveal information about a patient's medical condition without express written consent of the patient. There are a few exceptions around duty of care, but everything else is off-limits. (The main exceptions are parents of kids under 16, people with power of attorney and people who need full-time care for one reason or another)

AS far as public health issues go, I'm only aware that the ones that need to be publicly reported are any vaccine-preventable diseases (mumps, measles, whooping cough), chicken pox (while it is a vaccine-preventable disease, it doesn't need to be state reported, only just alerting the school), HIV and ANY outbreak of meningococcal (Meningococcal C has a vaccine, the others don't). That's all I'm aware of at the moment.