Table of Contents

Introduction2

Healthcare Professional Practice Legal Issues2

Malpractice2

Antitrust Law4

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability ACT (HIPAA)5

Conclusion7

Work Cited8

Legal Issues For Healthcare Professional Practice

Introduction

Legal Issues for Health Professionals is an important and practical guide to aide in the resolution of ethical dilemmas with legal implications. The legal system maintains the right to investigate and examine decisions made by healthcare practitioners when decisions appear unethical or perhaps unlawful. The various ethical theories provide direction for healthcare practitioners and ethics review boards with decision-making processes. I this paper we analysed the Legal Issues For Healthcare Professional Practice

Healthcare Professional Practice Legal Issues

Malpractice

Malpractice is negligence. Negligence is a tort. A tort is a civil wrong, therefore malpractice is a civil wrong. In its simplest terms, malpractice has four essential elements: 1) Duty. Every health care provider assumes a duty when starting consultations, diagnosis, or treatment of a patient. The duty arises from an expressed or implied contract. 2) Breach. For example, if you fail to make a correct diagnosis once you have assumed the duty to do so, you have created a 'breach of duty', due and owing to the patient. 3) Causal Connection. Your failure to correctly diagnose, ('duty' you 'breached') the duty due and owing to the patient and as a direct and proximate cause of your breach, caused damages. 4) Damages. The result of your failure to diagnose correctly, the patient sustained damages in the form of an additional hospital stay, complications that may or may not be of a permanent and continuing nature (Picard, pp 45-378).

Negligence is the most common civil suit filed against doctors. Liability for negligence will not be found unless the following factors are present: (a) the defendant must owe a duty to the plaintiff to exercise care; (b) the defendant must breach the standard of care established by law for his/her conduct; (c) the plaintiff must suffer loss or injury as a result of this breach; (d) the conduct of the defendant must be the 'proximate cause' of the plaintiff's loss or injury. In the case of Adderly v. Bremner the defendant physician was negligent in not changing the syringes to vaccinate 38 patients and instead used one needle for every two patients. As a consequence, the plaintiff was infected with septicemia (blood poisoning). This doctor failed to give the required standard of care. Any reasonable doctor would have in fact changed the syringe after each patient and would have foreseen the consequences for not changing them. According to the case the doctor did not follow instructions accompanying the vaccine, stressing the fact that a sterile needle and syringe were to be used for each patient. This case is a perfect example of a doctor not following orders and unprofessionally practicing on innocent patients. Though the plaintiff was not mortally injured, the doctor was found liable (Law, Sylvia and Steven , pp 34-129).

Antitrust Law

Antitrust law has played a critical role in shaping modern medical markets. For better or for worse, antitrust law helped usher in the era of ...