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Legal Issues in the Healthcare Industry and How to Avoid Them
[Name of the Writer]
[Name of the Institution]
Legal Issues in the Healthcare Industry and How to Avoid Them
Introduction
Legal procedures are a matter of routine for businesses. Organizations and firms indulge in the legal processes on a regular basis for various purposes, for example, taxation issues, expansion of business and many other matters. It can be said that for big organizations and firms indulgence in the legal procedures is a routine matter, and it is done for positive purposes. Just like all other types of business, the healthcare industry also goes into litigations from time to time various purposes, either for the attestation of some new drug, verification of some new medical procedure or the registration of some new unit meant for the healthcare purposes. All the above-mentioned tasks portray a positive meaning or indulgence in the legal activities for constructive purposes, but sometimes the medical practitioners or health care institutions go in litigations regarding a negative or harmful purpose as well.
In some of the cases, the health care institute or any specific healthcare practitioner is sued by the patient or the family of the patient for conducting malpractice in the medical procedures. Such cases are not a rare sight in the United States of America and every now and then we come across such news that in some part of the country or the state, a patient has sued the medical practitioner for conducting medical negligence. This piece of writing will throw light over the possible reasons why the patients sue individuals related to healthcare and how to avoid such litigation.
Discussion
Medical practitioners have to go through various situations on a daily basis; most of them are tough and tiring. They have to handle patients in critical conditions and treat patients with complex medical disorders. In addition to this, sometimes, a medical practitioner has to go through legal processes as well. A medical practitioner, whether he or she is a doctor, a nurse or even the ward boy may have to face the consequences of a little mistake for their whole life. It can result in the loss of their job or termination of their medical career forever. Sometimes, even the whole medical institute or the organization, like a hospital or a clinic, may also be sued depending upon the nature or the severity of the issue. If the case has been filed against some healthcare institute, it may have to bear serious legal procedures, and its future may be in a hoax.
There are multiple reasons behind taking legal action by the patient or their family against a doctor or hospital or clinic. The first and foremost always stands to be medical negligence. A healthcare institute or medical practitioner may be sued over the fact that they have shown irresponsibility towards their patient and treated him or her irresponsibly (Wu, 2015). Such cases mostly arise when the patients fail to survive even after complete effort to be saved by the hospital staff and the medical practitioner. In such cases, the plaintiff feels that the doctors or the hospital staff has not shown enough care towards the patient and has committed irresponsibility towards the serious condition of the patient, which is the reason behind patient’s death. If the case had been different, the patient would have survived.
When asked from the medical practitioner, they informed that 90% of the lawsuits are filed after the death of the patient. Other reasons for filing a lawsuit include multiple other reasons like failure to diagnose the correct medical issue or the occurring of an abnormal condition during the medical procedure. Moreover, the patients or the relatives of the patients also come up with the reasons like failure to treat the disease in a proper ways or failure to document all the information related to the patient whether its general information like age, gender etc. or specific information like certain allergies and medical conditions (Mathes, & Reifsnyder, 2014). A few numbers of people have also filed legal claims again medical personnel because they did not take their consent before performing any specific medical procedure over the patient or failed to follow the safety rules and regulations essential for the people of medical sciences.
A medical practitioner can avoid these hectic and lengthy legal procedures by taking some precautionary measure so that the patient or their family and friends could not claim for any irresponsibility or negligence in the medical procedure. The professionals working in the area of Clinical Risk Management remain busy in devising multiple strategies to take medical personnel out of such situations. A doctor, nurse or any medical practitioner should maintain a high standard of healthcare services like getting additional tests done, high-quality imaging and additional procedures in order to reduce liability (Paik, Black, & Hyman, 2014).
Another approach that should be used by a medical practitioner to avoid exposures and the likelihood of a lawsuit is keeping the lines of communication open from the very beginning. A doctor should maintain a positive relationship with the family or friends of the patient (whoever is dealing with the patient's case) and should keep them educated continuously about the patient's updated condition. It has been widely observed that patients trust the doctors that keep the doors of communication open and keep them or the family informed about the current medical conditions and the options.
Conclusion
Hence, it can be seen that along with being tough in the clinic or the operation theater; medical practice is a tough occupation in the legal grounds as well. Patients or their families may charge a medical practitioner for showing negligence and file a suit any time. So a medical professional should always be ready for any such condition and take necessary precautions in the very beginning so that he may not have to face litigations.
References
Mathes, M., & Reifsnyder, J. (2014). Nurse's Law: Questions & Answers for the Practicing Nurse. Sigma Theta Tau.
Paik, M., Black, B., & Hyman, D. A. (2014). Do doctors practice defensive medicine? Revisited. Accessed on October 5, 2016.
Wu, A. H., White, M. J., Oh, S., & Burchard, E. (2015). The Hawaii clopidogrel lawsuit: the possible effect on clinical laboratory testing. Personalized medicine, 12(3), 179-181.
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