Plaintiff attorneys and their contingency fees: causes of chaos in medical malpractice litigation
In the English Rule, the losing party in a lawsuit pays all legal costs. It is accepted worldwide; however, in the United States, it was replaced by the American Rule. In the American Rule, both the plaintiff and defendant in a lawsuit pay their own legal costs. Of course, there are exceptions. In theory, the Read more… Plaintiff attorneys and their contingency fees: causes of chaos in medical malpractice litigation originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 8, 2024 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Malpractice Source Type: blogs

Off-label prescriptions, side effects, and lawsuits: Navigating ethical and legal dilemmas
A recent TV advertisement attempted to recruit clients for a class action suit against a pharmaceutical manufacturer (PM) for a medication side effect (SE). The “cause of action” was unstated: was it the side effect’s existence or that the company failed to emphasize its severity? The SE was acknowledged not only by the company but Read more… Off-label prescriptions, side effects, and lawsuits: Navigating ethical and legal dilemmas originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 23, 2024 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Meds Medications Source Type: blogs

Weekly Roundup – March 16, 2024
Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week. HIMSS 2024: Bold Statements from Hal Wolf. Colin Hung attended a media briefing with the HIMSS CEO and learned about HIMSS’ international expansion plans, its role as a tight-knit society and not a loose association, and its desire to promote scalable software, perhaps even at the expense of startups. Read more… HIMSS 2024: A Closer Look at S...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 16, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup Source Type: blogs

Price Transparency: Shifting Responsibility to Employers
In this intriguing video, important advances in transparency of health care prices are explained by Mark Galvin, Founder, President and CEO at TALON at the HCAA conference in Las Vegas. Two “watershed moments” have been overlooked by most people, while media coverage focuses on other things such as the No Surprises Act. The first change came when a recent “transparency in coverage” law leverages fines on sponsors (normally employers), who the government hopes will then put pressure on health care providers to be more transparent. The second came with a class action lawsuit against Johnson & John...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 15, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Administration C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Revenue Cycle Management Employer Healthcare Employer Insurance HCAA Healthcare IT Video Interviews Healthcare Payers Healthcare Price Transpa Source Type: blogs

Malpractice lawsuits: a data-driven approach to risk management
The first book I ever read was The Last Angry Man. I could never have imagined then how it would influence me now. It is about a fictional character, Dr. Samuel Abelman. He is a general practitioner practicing in New York City during the 1950s. He is in the twilight of a career that spans Read more… Malpractice lawsuits: a data-driven approach to risk management originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 11, 2024 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Malpractice Source Type: blogs

Fee-For-Service: Predominant, Winning & Stupid
By MATTHEW HOLT In recent days and weeks, there have been three stories that have really brought home to me the inanity of how we run our health care system. Spoiler alert, they have the commonality that they all are made problematic by payment per individual transaction—better known as fee-for-service. First, several health insurers who sold their reputation to Wall Street as being wizards at understanding how doctors and patients behave had the curtain pulled back to reveal the man pulling the levers was missing a dashboard or dial or three. It happened to United, Humana and more, but I’ll focus on Agilon becau...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 4, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt Change Healthcare Colorado fee for service Humana UCHealth United HealthGroup Source Type: blogs

The opioid crisis: profits, lawsuits, and pharmaceutical influence
The absolute belief in a vast conspiracy is often associated with an unbalanced mind. People suffering from some forms of mental illness are prone to these beliefs, seeing the invisible hand of the CIA behind the music choices on their radio stations. But that’s not always the case. Dr. Andrew Wakefield was born in 1956 Read more… The opioid crisis: profits, lawsuits, and pharmaceutical influence originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 29, 2024 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Meds Source Type: blogs

So what can we do about health care costs?
By MATTHEW HOLT Last week Jeff Goldsmith wrote a great article in part explaining why health care costs in the US went up so much between 1965 and 2010. He also pointed out that health care has been the same portion of GDP for more than a decade (although we haven’t had a major recession in that time other than the Covid 2020 blip when it went up to 19%). However, it’s worth remembering that we are spending 17.3% of GDP while the other main OECD countries are spending 11-12%. Now it’s true that the US has lots of social problems that show up in heath spending and also that those other countries probably spend ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 20, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt Buzz Cooper Datmouth health spending Jeff Goldsmith John Wennberg Medicare Price controls Source Type: blogs

Steps to take so that a medical malpractice lawsuit is decided from unbiased opinions
Today, the conventional rules that medical experts use to evaluate the merits of a malpractice lawsuit are established by attorneys, not doctors. These rules are based on inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is acceptable except for one thing; it forgives threats to validity. Although the premises are true, the conclusions are influenced by bias. The rules Read more… Steps to take so that a medical malpractice lawsuit is decided from unbiased opinions originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 15, 2024 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Malpractice Source Type: blogs

Medical care, medical costs
 Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, something like 90% of Americans have some form of health insurance. Great news! That means we can all afford the medical services we need and nobody has to go broke because they get sick or are injured in a car crash or by somebody exercising their Second Amendment rights! Err, no. Sadly it does not mean that. In the first place, for the 50% of people who get their insurance through employment, it ’s costing them more and more for the premiums – by three times the rate of inflation, since 1999.    With that, plus deductibles, copays, and payment denials by in...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 2, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

How Healthcare Can Manage Compliance with Fine-Grained Protection
The following is a guest article by Marlena Herrera, Director at Protegrity Healthcare organizations are becoming more lucrative targets for hackers, as their data is rich with extremely sensitive information and is often susceptible to vulnerabilities. In the same step, the number of regulations governing the sector has grown in complexity, which stems from movements including the HIPAA Right of Access Initiative and fallout from the reversal of federally protected abortion access. Combining this with the increasing number of digital-first health applications and services on the market, protecting data at every touchpoint...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 2, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Analytics/Big Data Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Security and Privacy Data Protection Fine-Grained Data Protection Healthcare Compliance HIPAA Marlena Herrera Protegrity RBAC Role-Based Access Control Source Type: blogs

What ’ s Special About AI Risks and Remedies in Health Care?
This article looks at what’s special about AI in health care, and some ways to address its needs. For this article, I spoke just to lawyers, because we’ve heard plenty from the technologists about AI’s potential and what they’re doing to minimize risk. The perspective of attorneys with an expertise in health care is illuminating. An anthology from STAT also contains some relevant analyses and case studies. Liability and Licensing Are clinicians facing the risk of lawsuits if they heed the advice of AI engines? Where do the new systems differ from older forms of clinical decision support—or the s...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - December 29, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: AI/Machine Learning Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Regulations Security and Privacy Bard Berger Singerman LLP ChatGPT Erica Kraus FDA FDA AI Regulations Google Bard Healthcare AI Healthcare Source Type: blogs

Concerted Effort to Define Responsible Use of AI in Healthcare is Sorely Needed
The following is a guest article by Amy Hester, PhD, RN, BC, FAAN, Chairwoman and CEO at HD Nursing The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) across a number of industries, particularly in healthcare, has shown both great promise as well as cause for alarm.  A perfect example of not only misusing AI, but also continuing to use a model to make decisions affecting individual care that can be error-prone involves a recent class-action lawsuit filed against one of the nation’s largest health plans and its subsidiary.  Both companies stand accused of illegally using an algorithm to deny rehabilitation care to seriousl...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - December 22, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: AI/Machine Learning C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Regulations Artificial Intelligence Dr. Amy Hester Ethical AI HD Nursing Healthcare AI Healthcare Automation responsible AI Source Type: blogs

Recent HHS Settlement Underscores the Importance Compliance Plays in Cybersecurity
The following is a guest article by Dotty Bollinger, JD, Healthcare Compliance Consultant, Compliancy Group The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reached a settlement with Doctors’ Management Services after the healthcare vendor succumbed to a ransomware attack. The settlement, announced in a press release on the HHS site, resulted in a $100,000 fine, two years of OCR monitoring, and the requirement to adopt a corrective action plan. “Our settlement highlights how ransomware attacks are increasingly common and targeting the health care system. This leaves hospitals and their pa...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - December 13, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Ambulatory Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System LTPAC Regulations Security and Privacy 21CO 21st Century Oncology AMCA American Medical Collection Agency Compliancy Group Cyberattacks Cybersecurity Departmen Source Type: blogs

A scientific approach to malpractice defense
There has always been a “fight club” because there have always been medical malpractice lawsuits. They are predicated on complications, either errors of nature or medical errors, and no doctor is immune. In the United States, roughly 85,000 medical malpractice lawsuits are filed per year, and there are 1 million doctors. For any doctor, the Read more… A scientific approach to malpractice defense originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 21, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Malpractice Source Type: blogs