The Readmore 2014

• Mike Bonasso - Commercial Litigation
• Stephen Brooks - Medical Malpractice Law and Personal Injury Litigation
• Bob Coffield - Health Care Law
• Tom Flaherty - Personal Injury Litigation
• Ted Martin - Medical Malpractice Law 
• Don Sensabaugh - Medical Malpractice Law
• Jeff Wakefield - Commercial Litigation
  

Since its inception in 1983, Best Lawyers has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Because Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey in which more than 25,000 leading attorneys cast almost two million votes on the legal abilities of other lawyers in their specialties, and because lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed, inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.”

Straight Jackets Issued To All Hospital Patients Over Age 65?

By Val Jones, MD

Bob is a good friend and blog buddy of mine, and I respect his legal opinions on medical matters. He has kindly invited me to guest post on his blog, and so I’d like to take this opportunity to ask you (Bob’s audience) to help me with a medicolegal issue. Let me explain.

Today I viewed a TV ad sponsored by the AARP. It was promoting a remote alarm device that elderly people could use to notify EMS if they fall and need help. The ad featured a surprising statistic:

“One in three people over the age of 65 will fall down this year.”

That’s a pretty common occurrence, wouldn’t you say? It certainly argues for the need for those wearable alarm buttons.

But at the same time that these ads are running on television, Medicare is moving forward with their “never event” quality program. The initiative means that Medicare will not pay for the care of patients who experience a “never event” in a hospital – funding for that patient’s care will need to come out of the hospital’s budget. Medicare argues that they shouldn’t have to pay for medical errors such as “wrong side surgery.”

While I’m sympathetic to their perspective on wrong side surgery, the list of never events reaches far beyond the limits of medical errors to include things like mental status changes, infections and… drum roll please . . . Falls.

That’s right, Medicare believes that falls are “never events” and will not cover the costs associated with fall injuries in the hospital setting.

Let me ask you this, if 33% of people over the age of 65 fall during a given year, how on earth can we argue that falling (in a sicker, hospitalized population) can be prevented 100% of the time?

The only solution I can think of is to tie down all Medicare patients to their hospital beds so that they are unable to fall. Forget autonomy, freedom, dignity, and all that other stuff. Can hospitals afford to lose funding for fall-related injuries that up to a third (or more) of their Medicare patients might have during their hospitalizations?

I feel very sorry for patients in this new “never event” era. Going to the hospital is dehumanizing enough – you’re put in a backless gown, poked, prodded, kept up all night and visited by throngs of staff, and now, you may just be put in a straight jacket as well.

I ask you, Health Care Law Blog readers – what are we to do about this? Is it legal to tie people down against their will? Is it fair for Medicare to classify falls as “never events?” Could attorneys help us in any way here? I eagerly await your responses.

• The goal is to find an M.D., to become one.
• Keep statistics in perspective.
• Don't limit yourself to the web.
• Tell your doctor about your research.

Roger Weisberg's Critical Condition is a powerful, eye-opening look at the health care crisis in America. In an election season when health care reform has become one of the nation's most hotly debated issues, Critical Condition lays out the human consequences of an increasingly expensive and inaccessible system. Using the same cinema verite style he employed with Waging a Living (P.O.V., 2006), Weisberg allows ordinary hard-working Americans to tell their harrowing stories of battling critical illnesses without health insurance.

The four people profiled in Critical Condition live in places as diverse as Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; and Bethlehem, Penn., but they face distressingly similar obstacles to surviving without health insurance. It is through their eyes and words that we are taken through the gaping holes in the health care system, where care is often delayed or denied. Ultimately, the unforgettable subjects of Critical Condition discover that being uninsured can cost them their jobs, health, homes, savings, and even their lives.

Critical Condition dramatizes how health care is rationed based on ability to pay. "It's your money or your life," says one of the film's subjects, who courageously lays bare the uncounted cost in pain and suffering that is borne by millions of uninsured Americans

As the film illustrates, the country spends over $2 trillion a year — over $6,000 per person — on health care, yet is the only major industrial nation without universal coverage. Forty-seven million Americans live without health insurance, and 80 percent of them are from working families who either cannot afford insurance premiums or lose their insurance exactly when they need it most: when they fall ill and can no longer work.

Despite spending 50 percent more on health care than any other country in the world, America ranks 15th in preventable death, 24th in life expectancy, and 28th in infant mortality. The struggles of the four families profiled in Critical Condition put a human face on just what these statistics really mean for ordinary Americans.