Health Care Law - Medical Malpractice, Physician Malpractice Records, A Physician's Duty To Provide Medical Treatment, A Hospital's Duty To Provide Medical Treatment
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Health care law involves many facets of U.S. law, including TORTS, contracts, antitrust, and insurance. In 1990, the United States spent an estimated $500 billion on HEALTH CARE, which was more than 11 percent of the gross national product. According to statistics from the CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES (CMS), health care expenditures grew 6.5 percent per year from 1991 to 2001, and in 2001, the expenditures had grown to $1.4 trillion. The CMS predicts that these expenditures will grow by 7.3 percent annually and estimates that the U.S. will spend $3.1 trillion on health care in 2012.
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A defendant physician may be found liable for medical malpractice if the plaintiff patient can establish that there was in fact a patient-physician relationship; that the physician breached (i.e., violated or departed from) the accepted standard of medical care in the treatment of the patient; that the patient suffered an injury for which he or she should be compensated; and that the physician�…
In the past, it was very difficult for patients to discover malpractice information about their physicians. The federal government maintains the National Practitioners Data Bank, which lists doctors and malpractice claims in excess of $20,000, along with state disciplinary records. Its list is not made available to the public, but it is provided to state medical boards, hospitals, and other organi…
Medical malpractice dominates the headlines, but a more basic legal question involving medical care is the affirmative duty, if any, to provide medical treatment. The historical rule is that a physician has no duty to accept a patient, regardless of the severity of the illness. A physician's relationship with a patient was understood to be a voluntary, contracted one. Once the relationship …
The historical rule for hospitals is that they must act reasonably in their decisions to treat patients. Hospitals must acknowledge that a common practice of providing treatment to all emergency patients creates among members of a community an expectation that care will be provided whenever a person seeks care in an "unmistakable emergency." Seeking alternative care in a time-sensiti…
To understand why this kind of federal action applies in this situation, one must first understand the unique relation of doctors to hospitals. Doctors generally do not work for a particular hospital, but instead enjoy staff, or "admitting," privileges at several hospitals. They are accepted for membership on a medical staff by the staff itself, pursuant to its bylaws. The process of…
A trend toward "managed care" and away from "fee-for-service" medicine has been sparked by significant changes in the health insurance industry. Health care insurance originated in the 1930s with Blue Cross (hospitalization coverage) and Blue Shield (physician services coverage). It traditionally has stayed out of the provision of health care services and has served as …
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