MAY AAPS NEWS NOW ONLINE
FOR IN MEMBERS-ONLY SECTION
The new issue of AAPS News and
the Report from Washington are now available to AAPS members on the
members-only section of the AAPS website. Your mailed copy should have arrived
or will be there soon. Sign up
for your free password it takes less than a minute.
The rest of you will have to wait
until it is posted in the general area of the website next month.
A SAMPLE OF WHAT YOULL READ
Stories this month focus on the April 14
enforcement deadline for the HIPAA privacy rules, including members strategies
for compliance or non-compliance, an update on government data mining efforts
and editor Dr. Jane Orients Page One story, Miranda Warning for Patients.
Heres an excerpt:
As AAPS will inform patients in a
national advertising campaign, HIPAA-covered entities should be handing patients
a Miranda warning come April 14. That's the real meaning buried in the lengthy
privacy notification, which will resemble the Gramm- Leach-Bliley non-privacy
notices that you get from your bank and probably throw away.
The Miranda warning, of course,
applies to persons arrested as criminal suspects. And anyone with a medical
record could be a criminal suspect, with evidence from that record readily
accessible to a vast dragnet no warrant required.
For example, a prescription for an
opiate might be considered a reason for "oversight." The physician might have
demanded a urine screen for marijuana and other controlled substances as a
condition for prescribing pain relief. Such specimens should be handled with a
"chain of custody" appropriate for crime-scene evidence, advised pain management
expert David Greenberg, M.D., at a March 22 seminar sponsored by the Pima County
(Tucson, AZ) Medical Society. Could a positive screen found by overseers be used
as evidence to prosecute a patient? Or as an incentive to get a patient to
testify against a doctor as part of a plea bargain?
Other stories include a breakdown
of Medicare sanctions, news about the Texas version of the HIPAA bill, and the
legal tip of the month how to use slander laws in your favor.
If you accept Medicaid cases, be
sure to read the update on the case of Dr. and Mrs. Mitrione, the outcome of
which could affect doctors willingness to continue serving the poor. (A
reminder a $75.25 billing dispute resulted in a 23-month jail sentence.)
As usual, there is lively commentary in the
letters section, including a doctors report on his hourly wages. And of course,
veteran policy-analyst Robert Moffits Report from Washington, this month
explaining the myths behind the Medicare Trustees Annual Report.
And see the announcement about our third in a
series of our popular workshop, Thrive, Not JUST Survive
practice management workshops. The next will be held in Seattle on May 31.
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COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH
YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.
"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."
-- Albert Einstein, letter to a friend, 1901
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820
"What's the point of vaccination if it doesn't protect you from the unvaccinated?"
-- Sandy Gottstein
"Who gets to decide what the greater good is and how many will be sacrificed to it?"