Austin Texas Legal Issues Blog

The Recovery Audit Contractor Program is one group that contracts with the government ot correct inaccurate Medicare payments. Those who disagree with the program’s findings can appeal the process. However, one of the biggest critiques of the appeals process is the length of time it takes to reach a resolution. As of February 2015, the appeals process took an average of 572 days.

Due to this excessive amount of time, the American Hospital Association (AHA) sued the program, stating it was required to abide by congressional mandated deadlines. The court ultimately ruled in favor of the AHA. The judge’s ruling included required backlog reductions.

Medical errors are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States every year. A portion of these mistakes happen within the operating room. This statistic inspired a master’s student from Columbia University’s Data Science Institute to search for a resolution.

His question: does stress within the operating room impact the surgical outcome? The answer: a resounding yes.  

Lawmakers often pass or change laws with good intentions. In some cases, those intentions may not translate in the real world. An attempt to thwart wrongdoing can result in an unnecessarily confining situation.

A recent change to the federal laws regarding payment to clinical laboratories may be one such case.

Psychiatric facilities must operate while maintaining a difficult balance: provide the care patients need while not discharging them at a time they could injure themselves or others. A failure to navigate this balance wisely can result in allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

Texas officials have recently accused a local psychiatric facility of such wrongdoing. According to the indictment, the facility failed to aid patients in creating discharge documents and thus held the patients against their will. This resulted in allegations the facility violated Texas state law.