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Overly strict compliance with HIPAA threatens patient safety and quality of care, according to a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC.
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IRBs often struggle with determining risks of social and behavioral research studies. Its easy to be both too cautious and too complacent.
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Reducing prescriptions of high-risk antibiotics in hospitals by 30% could lead to 26% fewer cases of deadly diarrhea infections, according to new advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Health care providers frequently have misconceptions about legal requirements of end-of-life care. By educating providers about how to make decisions when people lose capacity, fewer formal ethics or legal consults will be needed.
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A proposed change to HIPAA might help healthcare providers alert law enforcement agencies that a persons mental illness should be considered when allowing a gun purchase, an action that is made difficult and sometimes impossible by the convergence of HIPAA and state laws.
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The Affordable Care Act invested significantly in comparative effectiveness research (CER), but at the same time, states that no decisions coming out of CER should determine what treatments are covered by insurers, notes Norman Daniels, PhD, professor of ethics and population health at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA.
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Healthcare providers should use social media research as a defense tool when sued by employees and physicians, says Philip Becnel, managing partner of Dinolt Becnel & Wells Investigative Group in Arlington, VA.
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While the vast majority of gamete donations are made anonymously, a growing number of countries are enacting laws allowing children access to identifying information about their gamete donor.
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There can be murky situations in which the right interpretation of HIPAA is not obvious, says Patricia Wagner, JD, an attorney with the law firm of Epstein Becker Green in Washington, DC.
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Healthcare providers can go overboard with efforts to comply with HIPAA, hindering the necessary transfer of patient information.