Rules regulating off-duty, online conduct are evolving Many readers have heard about a highly publicized complaint issued by the National Labor Relations Board against American Medical Response involving allegations that AMR terminated an employee based upon comments that the employee posted on her Facebook account. Although AMR has reportedly denied that the allegations are true, […]
Rule includes new screening measures for ambulance services On Sept. 23, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed new regulations that will substantially enhance compliance obligations for ambulance services. The proposed rule would implement several provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the federal health-care reform law, which will provide new “fraud […]
Placing surveillance on employees to curb FMLA abuse You’re the human resources manager of a large ambulance service, and you have an employee with a history of attendance problems who has several “occurrences” under the company’s attendance policy. Recently, the employee has been approved for intermittent leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) […]
The limited legalization of marijuana for medical use in several states has resulted in a number of interesting lawsuits being filed by employees who were terminated for having the drug in their system during work hours. Currently, 14 states and the District of Columbia have medical marijuana legislation, and employment suits are following. How the […]
On July 14, 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a proposed rule that will substantially change many of the current HIPAA regulations. These proposed amendments would implement the HIPAA changes made by the federal Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which became law last year. In addition, because […]
Many public and private ambulance providers are eligible to participate in a $350 million class action settlement agreed upon in a nationwide lawsuit brought by the American Medical Association and other plaintiffs against UnitedHealthcare Corporation and its affiliated health plans (“United”). The lawsuit, filed in 2000, alleged that United knowingly utilized a flawed database, operated […]
In June, the state of Massachusetts revoked 211 EMT licenses after a massive investigation by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that they had falsified their refresher training records. Most of the revocations were temporary, ranging from 45 days to nine months. The involved EMTs worked at 10 different private and 14 municipal services […]
The lawyer’s favorite answer to such a provocative question: It depends. A great deal hinges upon the type of system, individual state laws and a service’s available resources. Let’s take a look at the issues involved with EMS drawing blood at the request of law enforcement for evidence of DWI or other crimes. (This article […]
There’s a saying that if you keep your old clothes in the closet long enough, eventually they’ll come back into style. For some reason, this analogy keeps popping into my head as I listen to the public debate on the subject of health-care reform. In 1993, the Clinton administration came to office amid Democrats’ great […]
As of Sept. 23, 2009, new regulations require ambulance providers and other entities covered by HIPAA to notify affected individuals and the government in the event of a breach or suspected breach of “unsecured” protected health information. Fortunately, the Department of Health and Human Services, which issued and will enforce the regulations, will not penalize […]
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