Articles Tagged With:
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Information Blocking Still Happening After Cures Act
Information blocking is a threat to patient safety, but it still occurs regularly, despite the penalties for noncompliance laid out by the 21st Century Cures Act. Recently, the HHS Office of Inspector General announced its final rule establishing penalties of up to $1 million for any entities that block the flow of necessary health data.
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State Laws on PHI Require Careful Consideration
Complying with HIPAA requirements on patient privacy may be difficult sometimes, but it is not enough. State laws also apply — and they may come with different requirements.
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Check Insurance Coverage for Natural Disasters
Healthcare organizations should know if they are adequately insured for natural disasters. Organizations should review their policies with their insurance agents to understand what coverage they have for natural disasters and what additional coverage they might need.
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Court Dismisses Patient’s Complaint After Time Runs Out on State’s Statute of Repose
This ruling serves as a reminder of the importance of state-specific statutes of repose and their implications on medical practice and potential litigation, especially in circumstances interacting with federal law, where applicable.
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Court Orders New Trial After Finding Hospital’s Expert Lacked Necessary Qualifications
This case shows how expert testimony plays a crucial role in establishing the cause of injuries and determining liability in medical malpractice litigation. It also highlights the importance of selecting an expert who is not only qualified to offer an opinion on general causation, but one who is qualified to offer an opinion on specific causation. The difference between the two is the difference between a favorable verdict and a retrial.
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Employee Curiosity Sometimes Overcomes HIPAA Training
Recently, a hospital in Washington was fined $240,000 in a settlement with the Office for Civil Rights over allegations that 23 security guards snooped in the medical records of 419 patients — a reminder that this pernicious type of HIPAA violation is difficult to eliminate.
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Plan Now for Eventual HIPAA Changes
HHS has been expected to finalize proposed modifications to HIPAA in 2023, but it now appears that will not happen until December 2024 — or later. Whenever the changes come, covered entities will need to review their compliance policies and update them within 180 days of final rulemaking.
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Differentiating MELAS from Bland Ischemic Stroke: Clinicoradiologic Criteria
Stroke symptoms in mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes (MELAS) are difficult to diagnose correctly, which leads to missed opportunities to provide MELAS-specific treatment. Delay in diagnosis also complicates efforts to investigate acute treatments for MELAS. Khasminsky et al proposed clinicoradiologic criteria based on a single-center validation study. Although there are methodological limitations, the concepts highlighted by the authors are valuable.
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Treatment of Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease
After a four-year, complex clinical trial of an anti-amyloid antibody, solanezumab, there was no benefit in reducing the likelihood of progression of cognitive impairment in patients with positive amyloid positron emission tomography scans who started the trial cognitively unimpaired vs. placebo.
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Super-Refractory Status Epilepticus: Clinical Characteristics, Treatment, and Outcome
Patients with super-refractory status epilepticus (SRSE) differed from patients with first-time status epilepticus in clinical presentations and the treatment course. Although seizure control was achieved in most SRSE patients, the in-hospital mortality and the chance of severe disability at discharge were high.