Do NYS healthcare providers have a legal time limit to get your medical test results to you? United States (New York state) here. My wife got some bloodwork done at her doctor's office a few weeks ago, and she confirmed last Monday (2/2/21) with their office that the results were back, but the office secretary couldn't read her the results. Instead she has to wait for a nurse to call her back to read the results. She has called every 2 days since then and not only do the nurses not call back, but the office secretary keeps telling her that they are backlogged with work and that they will call when they can. I understand these are trying times, but 7 business days to make a call and read some results? Are there any NYS or Federal laws (HIPAA, etc.) that compel healthcare providers to give you your results within a set timeframe of the results being available? If so, what specific law/subsection/etc. is this, what are its terms and can someone provide a link to it?
According to this HHS.gov web page: Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, a covered entity must act on an individual’s request for access no later than 30 calendar days after receipt of the request. If the covered entity is not able to act within this timeframe, the entity may have up to an additional 30 calendar days, as long as it provides the individual – within that initial 30-day period – with a written statement of the reasons for the delay and the date by which the entity will complete its action on the request. See 45 CFR 164.524(b)(2). According to This Official NY state page: Q. How long will it take to see my records? A. Once your request is received, a physician or health care facility has 10 days to provide you with an opportunity to inspect your records. The law does not provide a specific time period by which copies of medical records must be provided. However, the state Health Department considers 10 to 14 days to be a reasonable time in which a practitioner should respond to such a request. So, while a timely response is desirable, a week is less than the legally enforceable period under HIPPA.
It's not illegal to ask. Whether they can give it to you, and under what circumstances, is another, much more complicated matter. For instance, if the database contains health information covered by HIPAA in the United States, or personal information covered by laws like GDPR or CCPA, the customer's ability to share the database may be restricted, either requiring additional confidentiality obligations/use restrictions, or preventing sharing entirely.
It would merely be a &quot;jerk move&quot;. HIPAA only applies to &quot;covered entities&quot;: Healthcare Providers Health Plans Healthcare Clearing Houses (i.e. Paying for your health care) Business Associates of the Above) Source: CDC page on HIPAA
Yes, it’s legal Homeopathic “medicines” contain no active ingredients so they are effectively placebos. Placebo work for some patients some of the time but they don’t work if the patient knows what they are. For them to be effective they have to be kept secret. Most doctors from time-to-time and for various reasons prescribe placebos. The ethics of this practice is debatable but the legality isn’t - it’s totally legal.
If that person becomes incapacitated or is deemed unfit to make their own decisions, will I be required to be physically present (for example, to sign something) to make those decisions if called upon? While it is customary for someone making decisions as weighty as removal of life support, to come to the hospital or care facility in person and discuss the issues with treating physicians, it isn't required. When you are physically there it is easier for you to personally assess the patient's condition rather than just taking someone else's word for it, and you have more informal access to everything that is going on in terms of people coming in and out of the patient's room, providers you wouldn't have known to speak to initiating conversations with you (e.g. there is typically an ER nurse for each shift, several residents doing rounds checking on a patient, and often also an outside specialist doctor involved in the treatment team). It is also usually easy when you are physically in a hospital to locate someone knowledgable and familiar with the kinds of issues you are facing at the moment to provide spiritual and religious guidance if you feel this would help you make your decision, while your neighborhood clergy person may not have a good understanding of these issues since they don't come up as often for someone is doesn't frequently spend time around people being treated in hospitals or hospices. And, this kind of pastoral counseling requires not just religious knowledge but an understanding of the options that are being presented through the lens of what is religiously and morally important about the differences between the different options. When I was an attorney for a hospital handling these issues for the hospital, we would have been willing to work with an out of state medical power of attorney agent without their physical presence. But, the fact that this was deep in the Rocky Mountains far from other urban areas (i.e. Grand Junction, Colorado) may have influenced a willingness to be flexible since it would often take a lot of time and money for someone to arrive in person. Also, while the medical power of attorney gives a specific person authority to act, an advanced medical directive is simply a document that goes into a patient's medical record that advises treating providers of the patient's intent and doesn't actually need next of kin approval or a medical power of attorney agent's say so to implement, although better practice is to seek that consent first in case there are any reasons why that advanced medical directive might have been procured improperly from someone lacking capacity or subsequently revoked. There usually will be forms for a medical power of attorney agent to sign, not authorizing a particular medical procedure, but authorizing treatment in general and providing personal and financial information about the patient in connection with admitting that person. But, these days, hospitals are relatively comfortable with handling that paperwork via fax or scanned copies sent via email, and some of the more flexible hospitals will even accept photos of signed documents sent via text message.
There aren't any specific laws or regulations about medical charges. Instead, this is a matter of general contract law, where you have to agree. You have to consent to be treated, and a signature is taken to be evidence of consent. The law does not say that they have to ask permission for absolutely everything they do, the action just as to be in accordance with an accepted standard of medical practice among members of the medical profession with similar training and experience in the same or similar medical community as that of the person treating, examining, or operating on the patient for whom the consent is obtained This law insulates doctors from getting sued. In a situation where treatment is provided against a patient's instructions, you may have a cause of action for e.g. battery. In general, a doctor can't poke you, draw blood, make "offensive contact" etc. without consent, and consenting to one procedure does not "open the floodgates" of consent for any othre procedure. Of course, if the procedure was not performed, you obviously are not liable for the cost (and they are not liable for a non-occurring battery). This may in fact constitute gross negligence. During trial, the primary issue is likely to be whether there is proof that the procedure was expressly rejected. The doctor would probably provide the consent form, and that form may or may not indicate that the test would be conducted. It would not be surprising if the patient never saw an actual form and instead just electro-signed, having been told that this is authorization to treat. Corroborating witnesses would be helpful. From a practical perspective, especially if the billing department is being recalcitrant, this is probably a matter best handled by an attorney who would start with a formal letter summarizing the consequences of unauthorized medical treatment.
I've litigated cases like these before. The IRS enforcement reaction is swift and severe. Penalties for the employer are heavy and rarely waived. It would be rare for a business like this to stay operational long enough to issue a W-2. A business like this would probably be shut down by the IRS and have the people responsible for the payroll function, at a minimum, promptly burdened with tax liens, within four to six months. These cases also constitute a significant share of all criminal tax prosecutions. The odds of someone doing this spending several years in federal prison is high. Generally speaking, if the wrongdoing is fully on the part of the employer without the collusion or knowledge of the employee, the IRS will not force the employee to double pay the taxes that should have been withheld by the employer in this situation. Instead, this IRS will try to recover the amounts that were withheld from the employees but not delivered to the IRS. It will seek to recover these amounts from the employer and also from other responsible persons in the organization (and from outsourced professionals) with the authority to pay the IRS who did not do so. There may be circumstances, if push comes to shove, where the IRS could collect from the employees in a case like this one (I've never had occasion to need to research that issue), but that would be the rare exception and not the rule, in practice. On the other hand, if the employer simply does not withhold taxes or prepare W-2s at all, and either 1099s people who should have been classified as employees (or files no information tax returns at all), the IRS will generally insist that the employee pay income taxes on the full amount owed and that they pay the employee part of payroll taxes. It will also pursue the employer for the employer's share of payroll taxes. The employer will also be jointly and severally liable for any taxes that should have been reported and subjected to withholding that are not paid by the employee (perhaps because the employee spent all the money). Sometimes cases like this are also criminally prosecuted, but it is less common to do so.
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this law; rather, I think this question shows a misconception of the way the legal system works in general. Here's the question: do you actually have "legally privileged" material on your phone? If not, what's keeping you from claiming that is that it's not true, and lying to a police officer is a bad idea. And just putting a letter from your lawyer on the phone doesn't mean you've established a legal privilege--attorney-client privilege is not a magic spell, it's a reasonable system of protection that only covers certain communications. The bottom line is: the statute in general, and that clause in particular, were included in the law to protect real, important, and substantial legal right. The courts interpret the law in light of that purpose. If the police officer finds a solution that protects your rights while still carrying out the purpose of the statute, the court will be unlikely to fault him or her. In this case, if you tell the officer that there is a letter from your attorney in a particular folder, the obvious solution is for the officer not to open that folder. Problem solved. In practice, in the United States at least, these cases are dealt with routinely; computers are seized, and attorneys and judges work together to ensure that privilege is protected while still allowing reasonable access to seized materials. I would imagine the same is true in the U.K. The bottom line is: the law is not a game, and technical "gotchas" are rarely effective. Common law systems allow judges enough leeway to avoid this sort of pointless technicality.