"Health & Medical News"

A recent Minnesota trial court ruling raises questions about whether medical specialty societies should serve as sentinels over expert witnesses in the courtroom.

A Hennepin County District Court judge tossed out claims that the American Academy of Ophthalmology defamed Charles Yancey, MD, when its ethics committee examined his statements as a plaintiff expert in a medical liability case. The investigation followed a complaint made by two academy members. Ophthalmologists Jeffrey R. Weis, MD, and David R. Hardten, MD, were defendants in the lawsuit and accused Dr. Yancey of giving misleading testimony.

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Louisiana physicians who were getting roped into the state’s lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company won a recent victory in their effort to defend their patients’ privacy. But doctors’ involvement in the case may not be over just yet.

The Louisiana attorney general is suing Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc., owned by Johnson & Johnson, for alleged illegal off-label promotion of Risperdal (risperidone). The state also claims the drug manufacturer defrauded Louisiana’s Medicaid program, which reimbursed for the drug.

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The Florida Supreme Court ignored decades of peer review protections when it ruled March 6 to allow patients to examine records on past adverse medical incidents, physicians and hospital organizations say.

The 4-3 high court decision says a state constitutional amendment giving patients access to records related to adverse medical incidents applies retroactively and opens up related peer review documents created before the amendment passed via ballot measure in November 2004.

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Physicians say a Missouri Supreme Court ruling, though narrow, recognizes the significance of medical staff bylaws and offers doctors some recourse in the face of unfair discipline.

Breaking with a 43-year-old precedent, a unanimous high court opened the door for medical staff members to sue hospitals over privileging disputes if the facilities fail to follow staff bylaws. Justices departed from a long-held principle that hospital privileging decisions were not subject to judicial review, noting that was the “nationwide majority rule” at the time of the high court’s 1965 decision.

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Washington — Physicians are being called upon, once again, to address concerns about the safety of childhood vaccines. This time families’ queries are driven by a special vaccine court’s decision to pay for the care of a young girl injured by vaccines.

The court ruled last fall that 9-year-old Hannah Poling’s underlying mitochondrial disorder was aggravated by the shots which she received as a toddler and resulted in brain dysfunction and “features of autism spectrum disorder.”

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From:
Treatment Research Institute
600 Public Ledger Building, 150 S. Independence Mall West
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Tel: (215) 399-0980
http://www.tresearch.org

Paying substance abuse treatment providers for results, not services, may lead to improved quality of care, according to the first published study of a novel performance-based contracting system implemented by the State of Delaware in 2002.

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A California appeals court dealt another blow to health plans over their policy cancellation tactics.

The 4th District Court of Appeal unanimously said insurers have a responsibility to make sure patients’ policy applications are complete and accurate before issuing coverage — not after expensive claims come in the door. Judges said plans cannot revoke patients’ policies unless they fully investigate pre-enrollment forms up front or insurers show patients intentionally misled them.

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A plan to establish drug courts in all 22 circuit courts in Mississippi has run aground because of funding concerns, the Hattiesburg American reported Jan. 30.

The goal of the expansion of the state’s existing drug-court program was to save money by reducing incarceration and providing treatment to addicted offenders, but lawmakers haven’t come up with the money to support taking the program to scale. Mississippi established a statewide drug court in 2003, but it was not funded until 2004, when fines for certain crimes were directed to a special fund that has generated about $4 million a year.

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Massachusetts physicians say a recent high court ruling expands physician liability well beyond the bounds of the doctor-patient relationship.

The state’s Supreme Judicial Court said doctors are liable not just to patients but also anyone else “foreseeably” put at risk when doctors fail to warn patients about potential side effects of drugs they prescribe.

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Medical-marijuana users can be fired for violating workplace drug policies in California, despite the fact that use of the drug is legal for medical purposes under state law, the California Supreme Court has ruled.

The Associated Press reported Jan. 24 that the court upheld the firing of medical-marijuana user Gary Ross, who failed a company-ordered drug test. Ross said the fact that he was an authorized medical-marijuana user should have protected him from being fired, but the employer said that the firing was justified because marijuana is illegal under federal law.

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