Regulatory Decapture: roll back the beast!
bttt
Our litigious society is definitely out of control. The graph should also show how many new attorneys there were during the same time frame and how many went into this kind of law.
Lawyers benefit the most from all these suits, fines, and penalties since they will be hired to appeal which could go on for years while padding their bank accounts significantly while the people who are on the ground doing the real work of healing people get the shaft.
On the other hand there are something like 500,000 serious medical mistakes made yearly. There must be a way to reduce this significantly through a process of quality control much like any assembly line which hospitals and clinics do resemble as they move people in and out shuffling them to the next area of care.
Then again there should be a way to wean the dead weight and hacks out of the profession so they don’t do more harm than they already have.
A complicated problem with no easy solutions unfortunately.
You can see this all started before the Obamacare bill. Related to the email the stimulus bill created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Health Information Technology Research Centers. These bureaucracies duplicate private sector information bases that utilize computer technologies for coordination and flow of recommendations and policies for medical knowledge. The HHS Secretary will use these bureaucracies to implement Congressional intent.
Decisions will be guided by a panel exceeding 20 members allowing the dominate political regime over 90% of appointments, while requiring only one physician. Among three separate reports, one evaluation must include health technologies meeting senior and disabled individual needs. Health care provider participation becomes mandatory under Section 13112 of the HITACT Act, if one participates in any government program, including Medicare serving seniors and disabled.
P.J. O’Rourke mentioned some years ago that there were three countries where you could be arrested for practicing medicine outside ‘the system’... North Korea, Cuba, and Canada.
Limit total annual financial penalties under federal law to say $100 plus your one-eighth of one’s highest annual income tax amount in the last ten in electronic IRS records.
Allow judges to double future annual limits.
We need to rid people of fear.
To penalize Medicare providers for such triviality is dangerous to the health of America’s seniors.
Perhaps a regulation specifically impacting medical practice should either have to be approved by the AMA or by Congress itself.
“Unlicensed New Jersey dentist Roben Brookhim agreed to pay $1.1 million and accept a 50-year exclusion from participating in Federal health care programs as part of a settlement to resolve his administrative liability for presenting false claims to Medicaid, billing for services furnished by an excluded person, and owning and controlling a Medicaid-participating entity while he was excluded, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today.”
....
“OIG alleged that from November 2005 through October 2012, Brookhim owned, controlled, and managed Associated Dental NP, LLC (ADNP), a New Jersey dental practice with multiple locations, in violation of his exclusion from Federal health care program participation in August 2000.”
“As part of his fraud scheme, Brookhim assumed the identity of a licensed New Jersey dentist (”Dentist A”), to provide services to ADNP patients. Brookhim assumed Dentist A’s identity because Brookhim had lost his dental license in 2004.”
https://www.oig.hhs.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2017/50year.asp
“01-06-2017
Utah Nursing Home and Owner Agree to 30 Year ExclusionOn January 6, 2017, Deseret Health Group and Jon Robertson (Robertson), Bountiful, Utah, agreed to be excluded from participation in all Federal health care programs for a period of thirty years under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1320a-7(b)(7) and 1320a-7(b)(6)(B). OIG alleged that Deseret Health Group and Robertson: (a) failed to provide adequate care planning and assessments of residents; (b) failed to provide medications, treatments, laboratory tests, physical therapy, and other services as ordered and/or prescribed by residents’ physicians; (c) failed to properly use and/or administer psychotropic drugs; (d) failed to follow appropriate pressure ulcer and infection control protocols for some residents; (e) failed to follow appropriate fall protocols for some residents; (f) failed to properly administer medications to some of the residents to avoid medication errors; (g) failed to provide a safe living environment for residents; and (h) failed to answer some residents’ call lights promptly. Senior Counsel Felicia Heimer represented OIG.”
https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/enforcement/cmp/
“Deseret Health Group runs facilities in Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Utah.
“Its founder, Jon Robertson, served prison time and owed $150,000 in restitution to the IRS for filing a false tax return as president of another nursing home management company.”
http://www.sltrib.com/home/2506455-155/utah-company-facing-bankruptcy-nursing-home