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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance includes two important exceptions. Employers remain limited by the provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Title VII requires employers to provide exemptions from any vaccine requirement to employees with sincerely held religious beliefs preventing them from taking the vaccine. Further, the ADA requires employers to provide exemptions from any vaccine requirement to employees with a disability that prevents them from taking the vaccine.
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Guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission indicates healthcare employers can require employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. These mandates come with some obligations and risks.
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The new COVID-19 requirements from OSHA for healthcare employers create substantial obligations, but many hospitals already are carrying out much of what is required. The challenge may come in formalizing a written plan and ensuring it addresses all of OSHA’s expectations.
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This case illustrates the standard of causation used in wrongful death and other actions alleging a patient’s injuries were caused by a doctor’s or hospital’s negligence. In this case, the expert essentially testified to several actions by the hospital and attending physician that increased the risk of injury to the patient, but did not specifically conclude any one or more of those allegedly negligent actions actually caused the patient’s death.
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This case shows the importance of jury instructions in medical negligence cases and defines how a court properly places the issues before the jury after evidence has been presented.
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The results of an analysis of closed nursing claims indicate costs have recently risen, and the increase is worse in some specialties. The average total incurred for each professional liability claim involving nurses has increased from similar analyses in 2011 and 2015. Costs increased to more than $210,000 per claim, a 4% increase since 2015.
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New research is shedding light on alarm fatigue and how to combat it. False alarms may be more problematic than the overall noise level in a unit.
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Healthcare employees’ use of social media brings the risks of violating HIPAA, disseminating incorrect information, and damaging the reputation of the hospital or health system. However, social media is so pervasive in most people’s lives that it is difficult to ban its use outright, even during work hours. That means healthcare organizations must carefully create social media policies that acknowledge its use by employees but set limits on what can be posted.
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Burnout and severe stress brought on by the pandemic may affect risk managers and patient safety professionals more than commonly known. Most attention related to stress is focused on frontline clinicians, but the effect on risk managers appears to be substantial.
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Hospitals and other healthcare organizations could benefit from a COVID-19 “glow” or “halo effect” in which medical malpractice juries look more favorably on defendants because of the public’s positive perception of healthcare workers. The portrayal of doctors and nurses as heroes might leave a lasting impression that affects how jurors perceive defense arguments.
