While coronavirus dominated much of the California legislative landscape in 2020, a number of bills on a variety of subjects impacting health care providers were signed into law by Governor Newsom. Following are a few new laws you should be aware of; all are effective January 1, 2021 unless otherwise noted. Employee Notification of COVID-19 Exposure: AB 685 (Reyes) requires employers to provide written notification within 24 hours to their employees if they are potentially exposed, at the workplace, to a person who was infectious with COVID-19 or who was subject to a COVID-19 related quarantine order. The law...
Beginning in April 2021, patients will have the right to directly access their electronic health information under a new federal requirement. On May 1, 2020 the DHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued a Final Rule on Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program (part of the 21st Century Cures Act). The law is also known informally as the “Open Charts law.” The Final Rule prohibits the practice of “information blocking,” which is defined as any practice which is likely to interfere with access, exchange, or use of electronic health information (EHI)...
CRICO Strategies Publishes New Benchmarking Report
On February 12, 2019, CRICO Strategies, a division of Harvard’s Risk Management Foundation (see footnote below), released its annual benchmarking report entitled, “Medical Malpractice in America – a 10-Year Assessment with Insights.” The Report analyzes 124,000 medical professional liability cases from 2007 to 2016, representing 30% of the total MPL claims in the nation. As your professional liability carrier, MIEC is determined to bring insight and actionable data to our members to improve patient safety and reduce both the number and cost of medical professional liability (MPL) claims. CRICO Strategies’ output is one of the most definitive sources available for...
Do you prescribe controlled substances? Do you provide prenatal or postpartum care, or pediatric care for infants? If you answered “yes” to any of these, you will want to know about some new laws taking effect in 2019. Laws are effective January 1, 2019 unless otherwise noted. AB 1753 (Low) Controlled Substance: Security Prescription Forms This law requires controlled substance security prescription forms to include a unique serialized number in a format approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The legislation did not include a transition period to allow for continued use of old prescription forms after January 1....
Hawai’i Members: Our Care, Our Choice Act Takes Effect in 2019
The state of Hawai’i just became the seventh state in the nation to allow physicians to assist terminally-ill patients in ending their own lives, in a move described by the state’s governor to allow those patients “to make their own end-of-life choices with dignity, grace and peace.”[1] Beginning on January 1, 2019, under the Our Care, Our Choice Act, Hawai’i residents who are mentally capable and suffering from a terminal illness are able to obtain prescriptions for medications to facilitate their death. HB 2739 was signed into law by Governor David Ige on April 5, 2018, and it is modeled...