If a nurse ever faces a criminal matter, they could wind up on the Medicare and Medicaid Exclusion list which prohibits a nurse from working in any facility where they take Medicare or Medicaid payments which is virtually every place. The goal of many attorneys is to keep a nurse with a criminal matter out of prison which is proper and a worthy goal for their client.  However, many an attorney may not understand the ramification if their nurse client is added to the exclusion list that makes … [Read more...]

Finally, the Department of Veteran Affairs has granted veterans direct access to advanced practice registered nurses.  It used to be that nurse practitioners were under the direction of a physician.  However, now in the entire VA system, nurse practitioners can practice independently.  This will give veterans increased access to care and decrease the long wait times that they have been experiencing. There are over 200,000 nurse practitioners in the country; 5,000 who work in the VA system.  … [Read more...]

Negligence is a civil wrong of which medical malpractice itself is a form.  There are 4 elements to negligence: duty, breach, cause and harm.  In order to have a claim for negligence, all 4 of these elements must be present. Let’s first look at negligence in a context outside of health care. Imagine you’re driving along and approach a stop sign.  You have a “duty” to come to stop at the sign.  If you go into the intersection without stopping, you have committed a “breach” of your … [Read more...]

Would you believe that if you have a license, which is expired, the Board can still take action on that license?   Unfortunately, many nurses find out the hard way that this is the case.  The idea is that, like a driver’s license, if your license gets suspended in one state, they don’t want you driving in another state.   Here, they don’t want you to reapply to get your license back.  In addition, the Board feels that the public has a right to know if there is a problem. If you have an … [Read more...]