By John Tingle
Given the upward trend over the years for National Health Service (NHS) clinical negligence litigation, it is possible that when the COVID-19 crisis abates, people will start to reflect on their care and clinical malpractice cases may result.
By Holly Fernandez Lynch
One of the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic has been seeing communities come together to offer support in ways big and small. Individuals are organizing drives to collect personal protective equipment for health care workers, media outlets are making pandemic content available for free, and children’s book authors are hosting online story times to offer a brief respite for parents suddenly thrust into homeschooling.
In that same spirit, the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania is hoping to ease the burden for bioethics faculty and bioethics and health professions students who may be in search of online content as their learning experiences have moved out of the brick-and-mortar classroom. We’re offering a variety of recorded video content in clinical and research ethics at no charge through at least June 30 – with lectures from two Petrie-Flom alums, Holly Fernandez Lynch and Emily A. Largent, as well as other faculty experts.
By Adriana Krasniansky
COVID-19 stands to be a watershed moment for telehealth adoption within the U.S. healthcare system.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (part of the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS) announced expanded Medicare telehealth coverage for over 80 health services, to be delivered over video or audio channels. Additionally, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced it would waive potential Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) penalties for good faith use of telehealth during the emergency. Both measures are designed to enable patients to receive a wider range of health care services remotely, reducing clinical congestion and limiting transmission of the virus.
In the midst of this emergency situation, health care providers can take measures to consider the ethical and legal aspects of tele-practice as they get started. This article is a short primer to help medical professionals understand telehealth in this moment, navigate regulations and technology practice standards, and choose technologies to support quality patient care. Read More
My guests are Wendy Mariner and Michael Ulrich. At Boston University School of Public Health, Mariner is the Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law, Professor in the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights, Professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management, and Director of the JD-MPH dual degree program. She is also a Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law and Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.
Ulrich is a Professor of Health Law, Ethics, & Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of public health, constitutional law, bioethics, and social justice, with an emphasis on the role of law in the health outcomes of vulnerable and underserved populations. Previously he was a Senior Fellow in Health Law, & Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and a bioethicist in the Division of AIDS at the National Institutes of Health.
Our discussion concentrates on two aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) where the healthcare system is as far as capacity and resources, the impact of new federal legislation, and what else is needed and (2) what is the legal valence (if any) of terms such as “shelter in place” or “quarantine” and how will we calibrate more serious infringements on liberty such as lockdowns.
The Week in Health Law Podcast from Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in health law and policy. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Google Play, listen at Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Tunein or Podbean.
Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find me on Twitter @nicolasterry or @WeekInHealthLaw.
By Leslie Francis and Margaret Pabst Battin
This post is part II of a two-part series on pandemic control strategies in response to COVID-19.
New testing methods may allow us to avoid many of the inequities and injustices of the traditional methods of pandemic control, if we can deploy them quickly enough.
Cross-posted from Written Description, where it originally appeared on March 30, 2020.
By Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Nicholson Price, Rachel Sachs, and Jacob Sherkow
One of the dizzying stream of innovation and health law stories to emerge last week is Oracle’s partnership with the White House to study unproven pharmaceuticals for treating COVID-19. We decided to unpack this story for ourselves and then to collectively share our thoughts in a short explainer.
Click here to read the full post at Written Description.
By Leslie Francis and Margaret Pabst Battin
This post is part I of a two-part series on pandemic control strategies in response to COVID-19.
Your life and the lives of many others may depend now on isolation, quarantine, cordon sanitaire, shelter in place, or physical distancing.
These terms have entered the public consciousness rapidly. Though general awareness has increased, the important practical and ethical differences between these practices require further explanation.
By Valerie Gutmann Koch, Govind Persad, and Wendy Netter Epstein
On March 17, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Dr. Jeremy Faust, titled Make This Simple Change to Free Up Hospital Beds Now. In it, he argues that cities and states should “temporarily relax the legal standard of medical malpractice,” in order to encourage hospitals to admit, and physicians to treat, the patients who need help during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a tweet promoting the piece, Dr. Faust expresses concern that in the absence of such a legal change, “docs will keep doing ‘usual’ low yield admissions.”
By Cansu Canca
As coronavirus cases increase worldwide, institutions keep their communities informed with frequent updates—but only up to a point. They share minimal information such as number of cases, but omit the names of individuals and identifying information.
Many institutions are legally obligated to protect individual privacy, but is this prohibition of transparency ethically justified?
Some even go a step further and ask you, an individual in a community, to choose privacy over transparency as well. Harvard—alongside with Yale, Chicago, and Northwestern—requests you to “Please Respect Individuals’ Privacy. Anonymity for these individuals remains paramount. Please respect their privacy—even if you believe you know who they are—so they can focus completely on their health” (emphasis in original).
But do you have an ethical obligation to do so at the time of a pandemic?
By Alicia Ely Yamin and Ole F. Norheim
Scholarly and official statements and publications regarding human rights during the current pandemic have largely reiterated the important lessons learned from HIV/AIDS, Zika and Ebola, such as: engagement with affected communities; combatting stigma and discrimination; ensuring access for the most vulnerable; accounting for gendered effects; and limiting rights restrictions in the name of public health.
But there is a notable silence as to one of the most critical decisions that almost every society will face during the COVID-19 pandemic: rationing scarce health care resources and access to care.