An Indiana agency that protects the interests of patients with developmental disabilities can’t sue the state’s social services administration to obtain the medical records of a mentally ill patient who died, the 7th Circuit ruled. A branch of state government cannot draw on federal civil rights laws to sue another branch of government, the Chicago-based appeals court decided….
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Soldiers' emotional battle scars put doctors in dilemma
Tim Juneman went to a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist in January 2008 to talk about his recurrent thoughts of suicide. The 25-year-old Washington State University student was an Iraq war veteran who had survived a year of tough fighting that left him with a twin diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain…
Drug safety monitoring system set to hit snags
A new system for monitoring the safety of marketed drugs and other medical products is being developed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to medical scientists writing in the New England Journal of Medicine this week. But a host of challenges will need to be overcome before it can be used successfully,…
NZ: Pleas for medical notes must be justified – commissioner
Insurance company requests for people’s full medical notes must be clearly justified, the Privacy Commissioner says. The issue has been highlighted by the case of terminally ill Christchurch man Wayne Croft, who is fighting his health insurance company over its refusal to pay his claim. Croft gave permission to Sovereign Insurance to access his medical…
Psychiatrists Must Beware the Perils of Cyberspace
An article by Jun Yan in the July 17 issue of Psychiatric News: If a patient has scattered personal information in cyberspace for all to see, can it be interpreted as his or her choice to relinquish confidentiality on this information? What if a patient denies suicidal ideation but posts suicidal messages on an online…
Those medical tests are yours
Los Angeles resident Rose Cohen says all she wanted was a copy of her laboratory test results. She’d been given a routine blood panel during an annual visit to her gynecologist and wanted to show the report to her internist. The results had already been returned to her gynecologist from the lab, meaning they were…