Only about half of the states consider it unethical and illegal to self-prescribe controlled substances or to prescribe them to family members, and most states do not address self-treatment or the treatment of family members. That means it is up to individual hospitals to prevent practitioners...
Gone are the days when physicians could claim they were board eligible, even if they finished residency training 30 years ago. Effective January 1, the ABMS has put limits on the time between when a physician finishes residency training and when he or she passes the board...
There was a time when medical staff standards seemed simpler and they were all located in one place: the Medical Staff chapter of The Joint Commission's Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals (CAMH). But things are different today. Standards that apply to the...
Understanding which medical staff members are eligible to serve as medical staff leaders can be challenging, particularly in markets in which hospitals compete aggressively with each other for patients and resources. On HCPro's e-mail talk group "Medical Staff Talk," one...
The Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (HCQIA) was created to provide immunity from monetary damages to hospitals and individual practitioners participating on medical peer review committees. HCQIA also created the National Practitioner Data Bank.
Two patients arrive in the ED with influenza during an outbreak. One is a 75-year-old man with several other chronic conditions and the other is a 45-year-old woman with three children. Who gets the last ventilator? Is it the woman because she is younger and has three children...
