Executive Order 13859, “Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,”[1] directed the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the leadership of several other federal agencies to prepare a memorandum to provide guidance to all Federal agencies to…
Good News and Bad News
Students of telehealth law, especially that which governs professional liability claims, labor at a disadvantage: Few such reported claims exist. There are probably several contributing factors. First, in the life of the law, telehealth is still relatively new, and whatever…
Liability Risks of Telehealth During the Coronavirus Outbreak: Review and Recommendations
A first for the MLO blog: Your scribe has the good fortune to have enticed Erkan Hassan, Pharm. D., to collaborate in creation of this post. BACKGROUND The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, has showcased telehealth for…
Postponing the Last Breath
By definition, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (“OHCA”) is the gravest emergency humans can face. According to the American Heart Association’s Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics – 2018 Update, http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2018/01/30/CIR.0000000000000558, the mortality rate is nearly 90%. Survival depends on immediate intervention, first…
Alexa, Are you Listening? A Novel Form of Remote Patient Monitoring
Among the most perilous threats to survival known to modern medicine is the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (“OHCA”). If a patient whose heart has stopped is not rescued with CPR in a few minutes, neurologically intact survival, and even survival itself,…
Drones in Medicine: Update
In March, 2019, UPS began offering a for-profit drone service to deliver blood samples to the WakeMed Raleigh Campus in Raleigh, North Carolina. https://www.wakemed.org/raleigh-campus. News reports indicate that a trip requiring 30 minutes via ground transportation requires only 3 minutes via…
Reimbursement for Examining Patient-Generated Images
A recent paper from abroad reported that “[m]ore patients are bringing pictures of their skin problems to their dermatologists, which helps the doctors better observe the progression and potentially diagnose the condition.” Emmanuelle Amsle, Angèle Soria, Marie-Sylvie Doutre, and the…
Having it Both Ways: The Location of Care, Revisited
The governments of the United States and of the State of Wisconsin accused Acacia Mental Health Clinic, LLC (“Acacia”) and its owner, Abraham Freund, of violating the False Claims Act. The defendants agreed to settle the matter by paying compensation…
Guideline Mischief
In 2016, CDC released its Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. Dowell, D., Haegerich, T.M., Chou, R., “CDC guideline for prescribing opioids for chronic pain — United States, 2016,” 65 MMWR Recomm. Rep. 1-49 (2016), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/rr/rr6501e1.htm. Recently, the…
Virginia Board of Medicine, Guidance 85-12 “Telemedicine,” Part 3
In the first installment in this series, https://medicalawfirm.com/2019/03/05/virginia-board-of-medicine-guidance-85-12-telemedicine/, we considered the import, under the law of Virginia, of guidance documents from state agencies. In brief, they are not binding. They are not law. In the second, https://medicalawfirm.com/2019/03/06/virginia-board-of-medicine-guidance-85-12-telemedicine-part-2/, we examined the…