Legal

You want the best, most reliable clinicians for your patients. And their performance is essential to your future success. There’s more to capability than experience and clinical skill, however, and there could be red flags in an otherwise stellar candidate’s past that they’d be unlikely to mention in an interview. The headlines out of Clallam County, Washington offer a bracing reminder of that as an emergency room physician there has been arrested and charged with …

The Supreme Court of the United States just issued a ruling that will make it more difficult for prosecutors to bring charges against physicians on the grounds that they violated the Controlled Substances Act. In a 6–3 vote, SCOTUS rejected lower courts’ convictions of a pair of pain specialists in Alabama and Arizona. Justice Stephen Breyer’s majority opinion expressed that the existing regulatory language is “ambiguous.” It went on to advise that future prosecutorial efforts …

Failing to Follow Consultation Protocols Could Bring Headaches—and Affect Patient Outcomes An urgent care provider in Chillicothe, OH has been flagged by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of the Inspector General allegedly for failing to follow the prescribed consultation process. Per a post by EHR Intelligence, the OIG claims that the provider intended for a patient with a T12 vertebrae compression fracture to receive chiropractic care at the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) clinic. …

The COVID-19 pandemic threw the entire world into chaos. Certainly urgent care centers experienced their own massive disruptions, such as keeping up with seemingly spontaneous changes in rules related to caring for patients during a healthcare crisis. That doesn’t mean less attention can be paid to complying with relevant regulations, however, as an urgent care operator in New York can affirm. The company agreed to pay over half a million dollars to settle allegations that …

An urgent care center in Lincoln, NE really did discover the hard way that the company it contracted to process its claims appears to have been negligent in doing so. A ransomware attack on the vendor’s system revealed “a significant number of claims that were either not handled properly, not processed at all or otherwise neglected,” according to a suit filed by the UC operator as quoted in an article published by the Lincoln Journal …

A consistent rationalization for vaccine-hesitant Americans is an irrational fear that the approved COVID-19 vaccines are not safe. That belief is unfounded, of course, given the wealth of evidence that risk for side effects is minimal while the protection offered by the vaccines is great but that doesn’t stop people from espousing it online and discouraging the undecided crowd from getting the shots. Now the legal profession may be adding to the manufactured controversy. “Vaccine …

An urgent care center in New Mexico is learning the hard way that ensuring all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed matters, regardless of the expertise of your clinicians. Management has been quoted in local media saying that every member of their team is (and has been) up to date on necessary training, but the company still had to pay a $13,500 penalty to settle violations of state-mandated training requirements for x-ray technicians. The …

Where staff and patients of the opposite sex or same-sex orientation are together in private, there is a risk for perceived or actual inappropriate advances, or worse. An urgent care operator in Georgia is grappling with such a situation at this very moment, as a medical assistant was arrested and charged with improper sexual contact by an employee or agent in the first degree. A patient alleged that the MA made “unwanted sexual contact with …

We’re all entitled to our opinions. More often than not, differences occur between healthcare providers and patients, such as when you’re trying to convince a reluctant individual to get the COVID-19 vaccine. When there’s disagreement between a licensed physician and governing bodies, though, there’s a more statutory concern. And a physician in Oregon just got a taste of how severe the consequences are for those who stray from passive disagreement to outright disobedience. The primary …

Controversial as the move might be, more states are requiring healthcare workers (HCWs) to get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. Often, the deadline gives those workers at least weeks to comply, while some rules offer the option of submitting to regular COVID-19 tests instead. At least one state, though, appears to have a mandate that leaves a gaping hole in the effort. As reported in the Portland Press Herald, many HCWs whose employer is not affiliated with …