Law Bans Entertainment OB Scans
In my last post I described a bill that was pending in Connecticut that would ban businesses that provided entertainment obstetrical sonograms. As an update: Connecticut's Governor M. Jodi Rell last week signed the bill into law. According to a story in the New Haven Register, the law was passed "...out of concern that businesses that offer ultrasounds to parents-to-be as keepsakes are potentially endangering the fetus."
Typically, in the past, these "keep-sake" sonography services would require a customer (they cannot be considered "patients") to provide a note from their OB doctor indicating that they had received a legitimate diagnostic scan. Although in most cases the parents-to-be would be informed that the pretty-pictures scan was not for diagnostic purposes many lay people didn't know that the individual performing the scan may not have had any medical training. Thus, not only wouldn't these untrained probe-holders be able to recognize an abnormality (if one was present), they also had no obligation to inform the customers of potentially life-threatening issues. Entertainment scans could, therefore, provide customers with a false sense of security regarding their pregnancies.
The new law, to my knowledge the first of its kind in the USA, requires an obstetrical sonogram to be "ordered by a licensed health care provider ... for a medical or diagnostic purpose".
It will be interesting to see how effective it is in shutting down the entertainment sonography businesses. Connecticut is a small state. How long will it be before the entertainers set up shop just over the state's borders with New York and Massachusetts?