Articles related to LEGAL MATTERS

Defamation lawsuits were brought into the limelight with the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard lawsuit, and physicians can learn a lot from the questions brought into the case, and most importantly, that even if you win the courtroom case, as Depp did, it can represent a loss in your real life.

The No Surprises Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2022, serves patients by legally protecting them from unexpected bills after receiving “emergency care, non-emergency care from out-of-network providers at in-network facilities, and air ambulance services from out-of-network providers.” But there are some doctors, like this acute-care surgeon, who believes the act is unconstitutional and is taking the federal government to court.

The story of “Dr. H,” an up-and-coming physician who was charged with 14 counts of murder in June 2019 after prescribing patients extremely high doses of fentanyl. The prosecution said Dr. H had intended to hasten or cause the deaths of the 14 patients, and it did not matter whether they were severely ill or close to dying. The defense argued the physician was merely relieving the patients’ suffering and that they died from their underlying diseases or being removed from ventilators. Who did the jury agree with?

“There have been a handful of cases which have now held, for one reason or another, that a third party can pursue a claim against a health care practitioner if they were injured as a result of that health care practitioner’s negligence to his or her own patient. What does this mean practically speaking? It opens the door for more lawsuits, lawsuits from people who were never your patient, but who may be impacted by a prescribing decision you make for your patient.”

Nurses and the American Nurses Association (ANA) worry the conviction of RaDonda Vaught could set precedent as the profession struggles with burnout and exhaustion due to COVID-19. In 2019, Vaught, 38, was charged with reckless homicide and impaired adult abuse after she allegedly gave a patient a paralytic instead of a sedative ahead of a PET scan.

A class action lawsuit against TeamHealth has concluded with a $15 million award settlement to be shared by some 3,000 emergency physicians in almost every US state. The doctors named in the court case alleged that TeamHealth, one of the nation’s largest medical staffing companies with 15,000 physicians, and its subsidiary Paragon Contracting Services, LLC, were in breach of their contracts and secretly cheated doctors out of a portion of the bonuses they were promised. The physicians claimed that their contracts required TeamHealth to pay them a bonus when they supervised care provided by a physician assistant, nurse practitioner, or other advanced practice provider (APP), but that did not happen.