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...]

The Visiting Nurse Service of New York, a nonprofit home health care agency, has recently been named in a lawsuit under the Federal and State False Claims Act alleging that the agency improperly and falsely billed Medicare and Medicaid. It is hard to believe that such a long standing agency that has served its state resident since 1893 has had this claim filed against them.  Visiting Nurse Service of New York denies the allegations. Remember that there are 2 sides of every lawsuit and, in … [Read more...]

Did you know that most automatic medication dispensing systems track discrepancies?  All discrepancies should be resolved by the end of the shift. They also report when controlled substances are taken and can compare the medications vended versus the medications charted.  Then, someone needs to check whether the waste was properly documented.  Was there an order for the medication?  How often did the nurse remove the medication for a particular patient?  Is the effectiveness of the medication … [Read more...]