When physicians become employees of hospitals or clinics, they often assign their billing rights to the employer as a part of the agreement. Once signed, few physicians give much attention to how the employer codes and bills the services, but the OIG has alerted physicians that could be a big mistake. The OIG has warned … Read more
When court cases involving healthcare hit federal court, many hospitals and physicians are shocked to learn that what they thought was confidential peer or quality review information is brought out in discovery. In another example of this important difference between state and federal litigation, a US District Court sitting in NY ruled that peer review … Read more
The federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) made the point that even small medical offices are not immune from HIPAA enforcement in April when a Phoenix cardiology office was fined $100,000 for HIPAA violations stemming from an online calendar system that exposed patient information. Among the other elements cited were a failure to provide and … Read more
Doctors are not the only ones who sometimes find EMTALA confusing as a recent Tennessee case highlights. Lawyers apparently don’t understand it either. A patient came to the hospital with severe eye pain, was treated with eye drops, and sent home. A few days later he returned with increased pain and was given an ointment … Read more
When Theresa Penn experienced crushing chest pain, she went to her family physician’s clinic in her home town. He diagnosed ACS and AMI and attempted to arrange a direct admit to a cardiologist at the nearest hospital. The on-call cardiologist refsued the case because the intensive care unit was full, so the physician sent the … Read more
A study in the most recent edition of Health Affairs confirms that patient dumping is running rampant in Denver area hospitals in spite of EMTALA laws. Sara Rosenblum, lead investigator, called for aggressive enforcement of EMTALA by a government unit rather than relying on patient and hospital complaints. Denver is one of a number of major cities where hospitals … Read more
The blogs are ablaze with the idea that the Obamacare ruling by the Supreme Court now makes it likely that EMTALA will be successfully challenged in the Courts as Unconstitutional. The odd thing is that it is coming from supporters of Obamacare as an accusation that Tea Party supporters will take this approach. And they are suggesting it might win. … Read more
If you are a LinkedIn member, please feel free to look me up and send me an invite to connect. You can people search for Stephen Frew. If you are not familiar with LinkedIn, it the adult version of Facebook. It is ALL business and professional with hundreds of special interest groups for healthcare, legal, and compliance issues. … Read more
As the talking heads and pundits blather on and on about what the greater implications are for the country, the economy, and healthcare from the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, the folks in the emergency department are going to have to deal with the real world right now and into the future. In the ugly reality were emergency … Read more