News Briefs
News Briefs
Task force issues proposals for marijuana law
A report outlining three proposals was submitted to the Joint Standing Committees on Health and Human Services and Criminal Justice of the Maine legislature in late September regarding the state’s medical marijuana law passed last year.
The Maine Attorney General’s Task Force on Medical Marijuana issued the proposals to implement the law.
The first proposal calls for the development of a research program to study the medical benefits of cannabinoids, which are found in the marijuana plant. The second proposal calls for establishing a medical marijuana patient registry that would allow registered patients to furnish marijuana to one other registered patient. The third proposal calls for starting a state marijuana distribution center.
Surprisingly, the state-run distribution center received the support of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association in South Portland and the Maine Sheriffs’ Association in Rockland. The association and its members "are keenly aware that our position doesn’t sit well with the commissioner of public safety and the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, but we represent a large constituency ourselves, and we are in touch with the people of our counties," says Mark Westrum, the sheriff of Sagadahoc County and president of the association.
More work still needed in end-of-life care
The U.S. health care industry isn’t set up to give proper treatment to patients with chronic illnesses that will disable and eventually kill them after a series of serious complications.
That’s the verdict from Joanne Lynn, MD, president of Americans for Better Care of the Dying in Washington, DC. Lynn testified at the Senate Special Aging Committee hearing on end-of-life care in July.
Some hospitals have made strides by cutting the time patients must wait for stronger pain medications and increased the use of written care plans, Lynn contends. She attributes those improvements to practices recommended by two federal agencies: the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, both units of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Also testifying at the hearing, James Tulsky, MD, director of the palliative care program at the Durham, NC, Veterans Affairs hospital, says physicians don’t adequately inform their patients about pain management. Therefore, patients often don’t make informed decisions about end-of-life care, he adds.
Tulsky also stated that physicians get little education in medical school about pain management, and many lack communication skills needed to have meaningful conversations with patients. He recommended that the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the National Institutes of Health create fellowships to mold future leaders in the palliative care arena.
Joint Commission adds new rule to survey
Last month, surveyors from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations began surveying hospitals for compliance with the Health Care Financing Administration’s (HCFA) requirement that a licensed independent practitioner conduct a face-to-face evaluation of an individual in restraint or seclusion for behavioral health reasons within one hour of its initiation. HCFA established the one-hour time frame in its interim final rule, which went into effect in August 1999.
The Commission announced recently that its surveyors would check for compliance with the HCFA rule. The standards and survey procedures committee modified the intent statement for existing Standard TX.7.1.3.1.7 in the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals (CAMH).
The revised intent statement requires that those hospitals using Joint Commission accreditation for Medicare deemed status purposes comply with the one-hour time frame when restraint or seclusion is used under the existing behavioral health care standards in the CAMH. The commission’s newly adopted standards for the behavioral health use of restraint or seclusion will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2001.
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