Healthcare Law

Medical Licensing and Discipline in America traces the evolution of the U.S. medical licensing system from its historical antecedents in the 18th and 19th century to its modern structure. David A. Johnson and Humayun J. Chaudhry provide an organizational history of the Federation of State Medical Boards within the broader context of the development of America's state-based system. As the national organization representing the interests of the individual state medical boards, the Federation has been at the forefront of developments in licensing, discipline, and regulation impacting the medical profession, medical education, and health policy within the United States. The narrative shifts between micro- and macro-level developments in the evolution of America's medical licensing system, blending national context with state-specific and Federation initiatives. For example, the book documents such milestones as the national shift toward greater public accountability by state medical boards as evidenced by California's inclusion of public members on its medical board, New Mexico's requirement for continuing medical education by physicians as a condition for license renewal and the Federation's policy development work advocating for both initiatives among all state medical boards. The book begins by examining the 18th and 19th century origins of the modern state-based medical regulatory system, including the reinstitution of licensing boards in the latter part of the 19th century and the early challenges facing boards, e.g., license portability, examinations, physician impostors, inter-professional tensions among physicians, etc. Medical Licensing and Discipline in America picks up the story of the Federation and its role in the major issue of licensing and discipline in the 20th century: uniformity in medical statute, evaluation of international medical graduates, nationally administered examinations for licensure, etc.

Winner of the American Sociological Association Sociology of Law Section 2013 Outstanding Book Award How do we know when physicians practice medicine safely? Can we trust doctors to discipline their own? What is a proper role of experts in a democracy? In the Public Interest raises these provocative questions, using medical licensing and discipline to advocate for a needed overhaul of how we decide public good in a society dominated by private interest groups. Throughout the twentieth century, American physicians built a powerful profession, but their drive toward professional autonomy has made outside observers increasingly concerned about physicians' ability to separate their own interests from those of the general public. Ruth Horowitz traces the history of medical licensure and the mechanisms that democratic societies have developed to certify doctors to deliver critical services. Combining her skills as a public member of medical licensing boards and as an ethnographer, Horowitz illuminates the workings of the crucial public institutions charged with maintaining public safety. She demonstrates the complex agendas different actors bring to board deliberations, the variations in the board authority across the country, the unevenly distributed institutional resources available to board members, and the difficulties non-physician members face as they struggle to balance interests of the parties involved. In the Public Interest suggests new procedures, resource allocation, and educational initiatives to increase physician oversight. Horowitz makes the case for regulations modeled after deliberative democracy that promise to open debates to the general public and allow public members to take a more active part in the decision-making process that affects vital community interests.

Medical sociology has long been concerned with the role played by specialist forms of expertise in enabling the governance of 'troublesome' social groups - including those who are unwell, 'deviant' and criminally insane. However, only recently has it begun to explore how the state ensures the public is protected from acts of medical malpractice, negligence and criminality. Against the background of a series of high-profile scandals, including the case of Dr Harold Shipman who murdered over 200 of his patients, this topical and authoritative book examines how the regulation of doctors has been modernised by reforms to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service and the introduction of the quality assurance process of medical revalidation. In doing so, it questions whether there is evidence to support the argument that revalidation serves the public interest by ensuring that individual doctors are fit to practise. Highlighting areas of good practice and areas for further research and development, the book is ideal for academics and postgraduates interested in medical sociology, socio-legal studies, medical law, medical education, health policy and related subjects

This book offers a framework for studying modern quality approaches, including more expansive definitions of quality in health care, patient safety, and the use of data-driven methods for monitoring quality performance. The text begins with a student-friendly introduction to the way that the central concerns in health law and policy -- cost, quality, access, and choice -- interact. The next chapters cover state and federal quality-control regulation, including professional licensure and discipline and Medicare and Medicaid provider certification for health care organizations. The book provides extensive material on liability, including both medical malpractice and the liability of health care organizations, and explores the impact of ERISA preemption on liability for quality failures. These chapters also address the duties of informed consent and confidentiality, including HIPAA, and the impact of nondiscrimination obligations as a matter of quality in health care. The book includes material on quality efforts within health care organizations, including their relationship with health care professionals through staff privileges, contracting, and employment.

This book unites step-by-step fundamentals with up-to-date research reviews of critical issues in the field, including sexual misconduct, patient abuse, drug use among medical practitioners, and unethical or illegal prescription practices. Fundamentals of Medical Practice Investigation will improve the quality of all types of medical investigation.

Regarded as the citable treatise in the field, the 7th Edition of Legal Medicine explores and illustrates the legal implications of medical practice and the special legal issues arising from managed care.
Contents: Introduction: legal medicine -- Medical practice: education and licensure -- Medical staff peer review in the credentialing and privileging and impairment of physicians -- Physician profile databases -- Health care professional impairment -- Health care provider contracts -- Agency -- Antitrust -- Complementary and alternative medicine -- Practice organizations and joint ventures -- Coproviders and institutional practice -- Physician as an employer -- Health professionals and the regulated industry: the laws and regulations enforced by the U.S. food drug and administration -- Health insurance and professional liability insurance -- Patents, intellectual property, and licenses -- Federal health information privacy requirements -- Ethics and bioethics -- Research and experimentation -- The human genome project -- Legal interests of the fetal patient -- Organ donation and transplantation -- Life care planning: ethical and legal issues -- The process of dying -- Physician-assisted suicide and palliative sedation -- Medical malpractice overview -- Patient safety and health care quality -- Medication errors -- Disclosure of adverse outcome and apologizing to the injured patient -- Risk management -- Alternative dispute resolution -- Physician-patient relationship -- Competency and capacity: a primer -- Informed consent to medical and surgical treatment -- Medical records: paper and electronic -- Medical testimony and the expert witness -- Liability of health care for entities negligent care -- Liability of managed care organizations -- Pharmacist malpractice and liability -- Medical product liability -- Telemedicine and electronic mail communication with patients -- Professional liability in emergency medicine -- Legal issues in newborn intensvie care -- Liability in obstetrics and gynecology -- Liability of ophthalmologists -- Liability of otolaryngologists -- Liability of radiologists -- Liability of neurologists -- Liability of plastic surgeons -- Nursing and the law -- Dental litigation: triad of concerns -- Criminalization of medical negligence -- Crimes by health care providers -- Countersuits by health care providers -- No-fault medical malpractice system in New Zealand -- Children as patients -- Child abuse -- Domestic violence patients -- Geriatric patients -- Oncology patients -- Brain-injured patients -- Patients with HIV infection and AIDS -- The law and the relief of pain: pain management -- Sports medicine -- Forensic pathology -- Forensic engineering -- Forensic toxicology -- Psychiatric patients and forensic psychiatry -- Criminalistics -- Forensic entomology -- Forensic odontology -- Utilization of forensic science in the civil and criminal justice systems: forensic use of medical information -- Occupational health law -- Public health law -- Legal aspects of bioterrorism -- Physician licensing and disciplining in England and Europe -- Privacy -- Drivers and the law.