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My law firm hears about medication errors in nursing home way too frequently. How about one resident (who is not diabetic) who is injected with insulin meant for another patient. Or, a resident’s records clearly reflect an allergy to certain medications yet the patient receives the medication to which she is allergic day after day after day.
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We have posted frequently about the governance and leadership of academic medical organizations. While one would think that health care organizations, and especially academic health care organizations ought to be held to a particularly high standard of governance, we have noted how their governance is often unrepresentative of key constituencies, opaque, unaccountable, unsupportive of the academic and health care mission, and not subject to codes of ethics. How the governance of organizations with such exemplary missions and sterling reputations got this way has been unclear.
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What in particular is new about the provisions is the area of business associates, who prior were required to follow the rules, but now its the law for them too, so they can also be fined as I read this, attorneys, etc. If data is encrypted and not readable, then there is also no breach, big hint,
make sure any data on portable devices is encrypted if you still use them to move patient data. There was one instance where the data was encrypted in the UK, but the password and log on were taped to the device, and this of course would still be a breach as it could be accessed.
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I know some families are shocked that an attorney won’t take their medical malpractice case.
Despite political grumblings of frivolous lawsuits, many attorneys reject Medical Malpractice cases for various reasons. First and foremost, just because a physician made a mistake, doesn’t mean you have a lawsuit.
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From theBostonChannel.com comes this story on executive compensation in a not-for-profit health care organization,
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This is funny, Purposol, off label prescribing, if you want to become a werewolf! BD
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The video starts out with talking about a case of claimed denied with a HMO, Regal. That hit a bit close to home as I used to help MDs and that was one of the HMO carriers. Not Regal, but other carriers had a few years back this floating patient syndrome with EOBs and the capitation lists. Patients were still eligible, no change with insurance, but were floaters, appeared some months and disappeared on other months, and would make some monthly statements pay the doctors short. Fixed that one with some SQL queries and had the MDs start getting their statements on spreadsheets instead of huge paper files so the data could be imported and analyzed into a small custom data base to figure out who was short that month and the dollar amounts as well as create individual listings to review each month and compare and the floating patient syndrome seemed to disappear in time once confronted.
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It’s almost World Series time in the US, so here’s a baseball story, courtesy the Pittsburgh Business Times,
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Please welcome Hannah Watson, who has written a guest post today on the topic of CRT-Ds. Thanks Hannah for adding some quality information to the blog!
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Can we focus on something important here? No wonder healthcare reform is taking so long. BD