Health care law and biology

Health Care Law

LC1

Read: Compliance needs a shrewd strategic plan

Link: http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/compliance-needs-shrewd-strategic-plan

Discuss the reasons why healthcare organizations should include a compliance program into their strategic planning?

In short, the Cerrato story linked above discusses and makes clear, more or less, that it is a non-optional part of doing business in the healthcare business and sphere. He noted that healthcare providers must comply with "a long list of healthcare-related laws and regulations" and that it remains "a major challenge for provider organizations around the country" (Cerrato, 2013). Just a short list of reasons why compliance should be a focal point within the broader strategic planning sphere for healthcare organizations is because doing otherwise can open a company to civil liability, can open up a company to agency sanction, can open up a company to criminal charges (in extreme cases), can lead to a degradation or failure to improve patient care, can lead to loss or corruption of patient or other medical data and so forth (Cerrato, 2013).

2. What is the benefit of having a strong compliance program in place? Cite examples.

Benefits to having a strategic and full compliance plan in place would include a mindfulness about legal and patient standards, less legal and/or public agency liability or regulation, less negative press, better patient outcomes and a better reputation (Cerrato, 2013).

LC2

Read:

Long Beach Mental Healthcare Facility Claims it Was in Compliance With Regulations at the Time of Actor's Son's Suicide

http://lbpost.com/news/2000006184-actor-sues-parent-company-of-long-beach-facility-where-son-committed-suicide

What are some of the laws and regulations for mental health facilities?

Rules would obviously include things like what medications can be given, why they can be given, how often patients need to be checked on, how many people need to be observing a larger group of patients, the accommodations of the patients, what they have access to, how to handle patients that have presented as suicidal (or tried to commit suicide) in the past and so forth (Rivera, 2015).

Do you think something as simple as plastic bags in this type of facility can be considered wrong?

There are so many things that are not technically weapons or implements to kill (one's self or someone else), that banning them all would be problematic to impossible. Any blunt object could be lethal. George Carlin made a joke about being able to use the Sunday edition of the New York Times as a weapon in a bit he did about airport security.

In the case of St. John, it would perhaps have been wise to keep bags away from him but keeping under consistent suicide watch would have been the wiser course. Even so, depending on the mandated check-in intervals, it may not have mattered. Short of having the patients under constant video surveillance at all times by a person who monitors the video, there is probably only so much that can be done. The patient/provider ratio will never be close to 1:1 (it isn't even that way in prisons) so dedicated attention is not possible or affordable (Rivera, 2015).

Biology

LC1

Describe in your own words, the stages of life on earth. Start with no life and stop with humans. Please use only scientific evidence, and not opinion.

Under the commonly accepted science of the matter, all of the universe as it currently exists mostly came about from the Big Bang and its outgrowths. The planet Earth, over billions of years, as well as the Milky Way Galaxy at large all formed and then life eventually started to form. The theory is that it started from single-cell organisms and then evolved from there. Single cell eventually went to fish, then other mammals (e.g. apes) and then humans.