Healthcare is very important and is apart of our everyday lives; it should be well maintained and improved when needed so. It is a lot of responsibility working in this field. There are also laws that come with healthcare; such as rules/regulations which are a system of standards given to a community. These laws come from government and state constitutions; statutes, and other administrative authorizations; along with legal decisions and case law. I am a fourth year pre-occupational therapy student and I plan on either working at a hospital, doctor’s office, or a school. Taking the health law course gave me knowledge of things in never knew about that I can now take and use towards my career; such as, the two type of laws (civil and criminal), the four sources of law, a TORT, elements of negligence, limitation to liability, and much more.
A tort would be generally defined as a civil wrong which causes an injury, for which a victim may seek damages, typically in the form of money, against the alleged wrongdoer. Tort law typically governs three legal theories of a lawsuit: negligence, strict liability, and intentional torts. Tort liability can be sought in a court of law against such wrongdoers and generally serves to award damages to a victim sufficient to restore him to the position he would have been in, had the tortious conduct not occurred. Medical malpractice relates to the liability of a medical professional for negligence in the diagnosis or treatment of a patient resulting in injury or death. But, other torts do cross over into the field of medical law. For example, it is possible for a medical professional to defame a patient if they wrongfully disclose untrue information about the patient’s health. Another example is battery when one performs a treatment on someone who has declined such treatment (often for religious reasons).
A civil wrong might be characterized in statute, or it might be built up by past court choices. Statutes are statements of law enacted by federal and state legislatures. There are civil lawsuits, also known as complaints, which involve individual wounds, business debates, slander and libel, and different other interests. Common law activities must be brought by a lawyer contracted by the plaintiff (person injured) against the defendant (supposed transgressor). The gatherings in a common case might be people, partnerships, or the state itself. The term defamation is a sweeping term that covers any explanation that harms someone’s notoriety. On the off chance that the announcement is made in composing and distributed, the defamation is called libel. If someone states something hurtful about another, the statement would then be called slander. Defamation is considered to be a civil wrong, or a tort. A person that has suffered defamatory may sue the person that made the statement.
Criminal law deals with an individual’s offenses against the state or federal government. The difference between the two, is that criminal law is more so the law of crime and their punishments, while civil law deals with disputes between one entity and another. Another difference among civil and criminal cases is what it actually takes for the person to win a case. In either preliminary, the informer must meet a burden of proof; basically an obligation to demonstrate or back up the cases being made. Criminal cases, and the punishments that can go with them, require a higher bar to be met. In criminal law, the standard is that the blamed are liable for perpetrating a wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, in some instances, both a civil suit and a criminal case can stem from the same incident.
Within the statute of limitations, there can be significant differences in the amount of time in which a prosecutor or plaintiff has after an incident to press charges or bring a claim against a defendant. These rules are intended to protect defendants from unreasonable demands. Torts are like crimes in the sense that liability is often based upon the violation of standards of conduct set by the society. Yet, not all torts are crimes, and violations of many criminal statutes do not injure private actors in ways that would give rise to tort claims; a duty of care is owed to the patient.
The Constitution both builds up the tenets for the working of the United States government and puts forward the principal opportunities and rights that every individual appreciates; the constitutional law consists of any court case that incorporates the constitution.
I have also learned about the three branches of government; which are executive, legislative, and judicial. Judicial law is a judge-made law, known as case law, is also sometimes referred to as the “common law.” Legislatures may write broad statutes and allow judges to make sense of the meanings of the laws by applying them to cases involving real people and businesses. the Legislative Branch consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate, which together form the United States Congress. The intensity of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States. The President is in charge of executing and implementing the laws composed by Congress and, with that in mind, delegates the leaders of the government organizations. The Vice President is likewise part of the Executive Branch, prepared to expect the Presidency should the need emerge. It is important to understand the meanings of these branches because it helps to understand the laws and their consequences.
Another topic that I learned a lot about in this class is, medical record policies and HIPPA. A large portion of us trust that our medical and other well-being data is private and ought to be ensured, and we need to realize who has this data. HIPAA is The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996; which includes the Privacy Rule, a Federal law, gives you rights over your health information and sets rules and limits on who can look at and receive your health information. The Privacy Rule applies to all forms of individuals’ protected health information, whether electronic, written, or oral. Before HIPAA came along, for the most part, no acknowledged arrangement of security measures or general requirements for ensuring health data existed in the healthcare industry.
An individual does not have a right to access PHI (Protected Health Information) that is not part of a designated record set because the information is not used to make decisions about individuals. This may include certain quality assessment or improvement records, patient safety activity records, or business planning, development, and management records that are used for business decisions more generally rather than to make decisions about individuals. Also, an individual’s personal representative (generally, a person with authority under State law to make health care decisions for the individual) also has the right to access PHI about the individual in a designated record set (as well as to direct the covered entity to transmit a copy of the PHI to a designated person or entity of the individual’s choice), upon request. It is very important that healthcare providers take heed in the rules listed under HIPAA, because if not, a mistake could be made and the person/business career would be at risk.
