Today we are covering: what is "standard of care," why it's important to you as a medical professional, and more importantly, how you can stay within your standard of care and make sure that you're not subject to any unwarranted liability. 

When Does Duty Call? 

Amongst physicians or lay people, they usually talk about malpractice in terms of being any unskilled, bad, or negligent treatment that causes injuries to the patient. That can be an action that you take, or an omission that you do not take, in your care of a patient. So, how do we determine if your actions or omissions are bad, unskilled, or negligent? We come up with a “standard of care.” Before we get to that definition, we have to go backwards and ask, “To win a lawsuit, what does the plaintiff have to prove in order to win?” 

In most states, the plaintiff has to establish that the professional owed a “standard of care” or a “duty of care” to that...

Today, I want to help you decide how you're going to expand your practice or reevaluate how your practice is currently set up so that you can avoid committing crimes and going to jail. That may sound intense and scary, and while I do not mean to scare you, I do want you to know what your risks are. When you are sitting down to conduct your risk analysis, are you covering all your bases? Or, are you leaving areas open to potential illegalities?

You may have set up your practice based upon how others have done it, or you may have just done what you wanted in terms of setting up and expanding your practice. You have to be careful here. You need to know what the actual limitations and rules are so that you can work within them and even work within those areas that are not catching up to speed. When it comes to telemedicine specifically, the industry is far outpacing the regulators. In other words, they haven't made laws to catch up with the advancement of technology and the...