Dumping on the Skids

L.A. Targets Patient Dumping | LAT | 12.22.05

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office is warning hospitals across Los Angeles today they are potential targets of an investigation into alleged dumping of patients on skid row.

City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said Wednesday that the probe could result in criminal charges or lawsuits if hospitals dumped patients against their will.

…

The city attorney’s letter to hospitals, obtained by The Times, queries them about possible violations of the federal Emergency Medical Transfer and Active Labor Act. That law requires hospitals to screen and stabilize all patients and penalizes them for releasing or transferring patients who are medically unstable.

The letter also cites a state law dealing with unfair business practices. That law has been used to prosecute alleged slumlords. The law allows a corporation to be sued for unscrupulous behavior. It also allows the government to ask a judge to issue an order forbidding a corporation to take certain actions. If the corporation violates the court order, it can be fined.

The letter, written by Jeffrey B. Isaacs, the chief of the city attorney’s criminal and special litigation branch, asks hospitals 10 questions about the types of patients they admit, discharge policies, procedures regarding the transfer or release of homeless patients, and whether the hospitals send patients to social service providers in downtown Los Angeles.

In addition, it asks whether the hospitals have identified any violations of the federal Emergency Medical Transfer act involving homeless patients.

…

Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn., a business advocacy group, also welcomed the news.

“Institutions need to be held responsible,” Lopez said. “How can you take a person who cannot fend for themselves and drop them anywhere, but much less the most dangerous few blocks in Los Angeles?

“Skid row is where people are sent to die or live the rest of their lives in a deathlike trance. And every single day it goes on, we are allowing it.”

With EMTALA and unfair business practices investigations pending—the waiting rooms are looking more crowded.

See here.

Harassment; Fire Sale

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• Why a fire sale on nuclear imaging equipment is coming
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Celebration

Third year of law school is in the “bag.”

Finals are over…Bye–Bye:

1. Corporations
2. Health Law
3. Evidence
4. Legal Analysis & Writing
5. Legal Research
6. Professional Responsibility

Only one more year…and then the California Bar Exam—February 2007.

Microsoft; Google; Wikipedia, Web2.0

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• Writely - The Web Word Processor
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• Num Sum: web spreadsheet
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• Zimbra™ - Home
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• Linux email servers offer scalability and flexibility | Scalix
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• Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft?
  The forces arrayed against Microsoft, analysts say, may well prove more formidable than ever. “The problem Microsoft faces today is that there is a totally different model emerging for how software is created, distributed, used and paid for,” said George
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• Manipulating a Journal Article
  …so doctors are on notice that they will need to take the findings of industry-backed studies with skeptical caution.
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• San Francisco Chronicle Struggles as Internet Siphons Readers, Ads
  The Chronicle’s woes are being closely watched around the country as the newspaper finds itself on the front lines of the battle between old and new media. As more consumers get their news from electronic sources and advertising follows them, analysts war
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• Wikipedia Watch
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• A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank
  It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility.
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• A false Wikipedia ‘biography’
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• Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar - New York Times
  For Mr. Seigenthaler, whose biography on Wikipedia has since been corrected, the lesson is simple: “We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research, but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-
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Delicious Yahoo

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• del.icio.us: y.ah.oo!
  About time!!!
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No Couch Potato Left Behind

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• The Inalienable Right to a Remote
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• Is Wikipedia safe from libel liability?
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Lab Error Law Suits

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• Lab Mistakes Threaten Credibility, Spur Lawsuits
  The faulty lab operations have raised alarm among medical experts about federal oversight and inspections of hospital laboratories across the country.
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Medcare D; Email; Wiki; Geek in the neighborhood

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• Agency Uncovers Problems in Drug Discount Program - New York Times
  Congressional investigators said Wednesday that they had found serious, widespread problems in a government program that issued drug discount cards to 6.4 million Medicare beneficiaries, as a precursor to the full-fledged drug benefit that takes effect ne
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• E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago
  Instead of shooting copies of the same document to several people via an e-mail attachment, only to have to keep track of, merge, and archive all the fixes back into a central version, he threw the problem up on a wiki page where everyone could brainstorm
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• Why Wiki?
  This is an old open-source technology that’s gradually saturated the on-line programming community to get at its sheer utility—nothing else. Nobody’s pumping it. Nobody’s promoting it. We’ve had more than a million downloads of source fields alone—of
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• Kill Your E-mail, Wiki Wiki!
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• WizardsofWinter SM
  Geek in the neighborhood is beneficial–Excellent!
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