Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 20 of 20

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Consequences Of Abortion Restrictions For Women's Healthcare, Maya Manian Dec 2013

The Consequences Of Abortion Restrictions For Women's Healthcare, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

This Essay challenges the false assumption that abortion care can be segregated from women’s medical care and targeted for special restrictions without any effects on women’s health more broadly. As a matter of medical reality, abortion cannot be isolated from the continuum of women’s healthcare. Yet policymakers and the public have failed to understand the interconnectedness of abortion with other aspects of women’s medical care. In fact, existing abortion restrictions harm women’s health even for women not actively seeking abortion care, but these impacts remain obscured. For example, antiabortion laws and policies have spillover effects on miscarriage management, prenatal care, …


Medical Malpractice Reform Measures And Their Effects, Robert Leflar Jun 2013

Medical Malpractice Reform Measures And Their Effects, Robert Leflar

Robert B Leflar

New rules and methods for medical injury dispute resolution have been launched in New Hampshire and New York, and demonstration projects are underway elsewhere. This article describes major medical malpractice reforms undertaken and proposed in recent years. Reforms are classified as (1) liability-limiting initiatives favoring health-care providers; (2) procedural innovations promoted as improving dispute resolution processes, such as patient compensation funds, “sorry” laws, disclosure and early offer laws, health courts, and safe harbor laws; and (3) major conceptual reforms to move liability away from physicians to hospitals or administrative no-fault compensation systems. Empirical evidence about the practical effects of already-implemented …


Reform Of The United States Health Care System: An Overview, Robert B. Leflar Dec 2012

Reform Of The United States Health Care System: An Overview, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

This essay, written for readers unfamiliar with the details of American health law and policy, portrays the essential features of the battle for health reform in the United States and of the law that survived the battle: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The essay summarizes key aspects of the U.S. health care system and how it compares in terms of costs and results with other advanced nations’ systems. The political and legal conflicts leading up to and following PPACA’s enactment are described. The major features of the law, attempting to address problems of access to health care, …


The Law Of Medical Misadventure In Japan, Robert B. Leflar Dec 2011

The Law Of Medical Misadventure In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

This paper offers a comprehensive overview of Japanese law and practice relating to iatrogenic (medically-caused) injury, with comparisons to other nations’ medical law systems. The paper addresses criminal sanctions for Japanese physicians’ negligent and illegal acts; civil law principles of substantive law and related issues of procedure, practice, and liability insurance; and administrative measures including health ministry programs aimed at expanding and improving the quality of peer review within Japanese medicine, and a recently implemented no-fault compensation system for birth-related injuries. Among the paper’s findings are these. Criminal and civil actions increased rapidly after highly publicized medical error events at …


The Health Care Quality Improvement Act Of 1986 Meets The Era Of Health Care Reform: Continuing Themes And Common Threads, Michele L. Mekel Dec 2011

The Health Care Quality Improvement Act Of 1986 Meets The Era Of Health Care Reform: Continuing Themes And Common Threads, Michele L. Mekel

Michele L Mekel

The articles the 13th Annual Southern Illinois Healthcare/Southern Illinois University Health Policy Institute symposium issue of The Journal of Legal Medicine plait the cords connecting 1986’s HCQIA and 2011’s PPACA. Such a historically contextual approach to viewing key themes and how they are stitched, over time, into the fabric of the nation’s health law and policy leads to a much more robust understanding not only of where U.S. health law and policy has come from—and why—but also aids in developing informed and integrated health law and policy moving forward.


The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women In The Treatment Of Pain, Diane E. Hoffmann, Anita J. Tarzian Oct 2011

The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women In The Treatment Of Pain, Diane E. Hoffmann, Anita J. Tarzian

Diane Hoffmann

In general, women report more severe levels of pain, more frequent incidences of pain, and pain of longer duration than men, but are nonetheless treated for pain less aggressively. The authors investigate this paradox from two perspectives: Do men and women in fact experience pain differently - whether biologically, cognitively, and/or emotionally? And regardless of the answer, what accounts for the differences in the pain treatment they receive, and what can we do to correct this situation?


Resolving Medical Futility Disputes, Thaddeus M. Pope, Donna Casey May 2011

Resolving Medical Futility Disputes, Thaddeus M. Pope, Donna Casey

Thaddeus Mason Pope

No abstract provided.


Public And Private Justice: Redressing Health Care Harm In Japan, Robert B. Leflar Dec 2010

Public And Private Justice: Redressing Health Care Harm In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

Japanese legal structures addressing health care-related deaths and injuries rely more on public law institutions and rules than do the common-law North American jurisdictions, where private law adjudication is predominant. This article explores four developments in 21st-century Japanese health care law. The first two are in the public law sphere: criminal prosecutions of health care personnel accused of medical errors, and a health ministry-sponsored “Model Project” to analyze medical-practice-associated deaths. The article addresses a private law innovation: health care divisions of trial courts in several metropolitan areas. Finally, the article introduces Japan’s new no-fault program for compensating birth-related obstetrical injuries. …


Medical Malpractice (Book Review), Robert B. Leflar Dec 2010

Medical Malpractice (Book Review), Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

This is a review of Medical Malpractice, by Frank Sloan and Lindsey Chepke. This superb book provides a balanced, comprehensive, factual overview of the structure, flaws, and merits of the U.S. legal system relating to malpractice; the causes of cyclical insurance pricing and availability difficulties; ameliorative initiatives both implemented and proposed; and the political considerations affecting the achievability of leading reform proposals. The authors' evidence-based stances will discommode many participants in the malpractice debate, physicians and trial lawyers alike. The book debunks widely-held "myths of medical malpractice" propounded by medical tort reformers. However, the authors also conclude that "no convincing …


Review Of "Health Law And Bioethics: Cases In Context", Michele L. Mekel Sep 2010

Review Of "Health Law And Bioethics: Cases In Context", Michele L. Mekel

Michele L Mekel

A review of the book "Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context"


Reasons To Pass Health Reform, Robert B. Leflar, Hershey Garner Md Mar 2010

Reasons To Pass Health Reform, Robert B. Leflar, Hershey Garner Md

Robert B Leflar

Column 5 (of 5) on the health reform debate


Health Reform: Arkansas Impacts, Robert B. Leflar Feb 2010

Health Reform: Arkansas Impacts, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

Column 4 (of 5) on the health reform debate


Health Bills: What's At The Core, Robert B. Leflar Nov 2009

Health Bills: What's At The Core, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

Column 2 (of 5) on the health reform debate: explanation of the legislation.


Health Care: Yellow Lights, Red Flags, Robert B. Leflar Nov 2009

Health Care: Yellow Lights, Red Flags, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

Column 1 (of 5) on the health reform debate


Research Governance Lessons From The National Placebo Initiative, Heather Sampson, Charles Weijer, Daryl Pullman Mar 2009

Research Governance Lessons From The National Placebo Initiative, Heather Sampson, Charles Weijer, Daryl Pullman

Charles Weijer

No abstract provided.


The Regulation Of Medical Malpractice In Japan, Robert Leflar Dec 2008

The Regulation Of Medical Malpractice In Japan, Robert Leflar

Robert B Leflar

How Japanese legal and social institutions handle medical errors is little known outside Japan. For almost all of the 20th century, a paternalistic paradigm prevailed. Characteristics of the legal environment affecting Japanese medicine included few attorneys handling medical cases, low litigation rates, long delays, predictable damage awards, and low-cost malpractice insurance. However, transparency principles have gained traction and public concern over medical errors has intensified. Recent legal developments include courts' adoption of a less deferential standard of informed consent; increases in the numbers of malpractice claims and of practicing attorneys; more efficient claims handling by specialist judges and speedier trials; …


Medical Error As Reportable Event, As Tort, As Crime: A Transpacific Comparison, Robert B. Leflar, Futoshi Iwata Dec 2004

Medical Error As Reportable Event, As Tort, As Crime: A Transpacific Comparison, Robert B. Leflar, Futoshi Iwata

Robert B Leflar

All nations seek to reduce the human toll from medical error, but variations in legal and institutional structures guide those efforts into different trajectories. This article compares legal and institutional responses to patient safety problems in the United States and Japan, addressing developments in civil malpractice law (including discoverability of internal hospital documents), administrative practice (including medical accident reporting systems), and - of particular significance in Japan - criminal law. In the U.S., battles over rules of malpractice litigation are fierce; tort law occupies center stage. The hospital accreditation process plays a critical role in medical quality control, and peer …


Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan: 2001 Epilogue, Robert B. Leflar Dec 2001

Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan: 2001 Epilogue, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

Japan is on a steeper trajectory toward the incorporation of informed consent principles into medical practice than the “gradual transformation” observed in a 1996 article, Informed Consent and Patients’ Rights in Japan. Among the most significant recent developments from 1996 to 2001 have been these seven: (1) the 1997 enactment of the Organ Transplantation Law permitting the use of brain death criteria in limited circumstances in which informed consent is present; (2) the strengthening of patients’ rights in clinical drug trials; (3) the continued trend toward increasing disclosure to patients of cancer diagnoses; (4) initiatives by the health ministry toward …


Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan, Robert B. Leflar Dec 1995

Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

This article analyzes the development of the concept of informed consent in the context of the culture and economics of Japanese medicine, and locates that development within the framework of the nation's civil law system. Part II sketches the cultural foundations of medical paternalism in Japan; explores the economic incentives (many of them administratively directed) that have sustained physicians' traditional dominant roles; and describes the judiciary's hesitancy to challenge physicians' professional discretion. Part III delineates the forces testing the paternalist model: the undermining of the physicians' personal knowledge of their patients that accompanies the shift from neighborhood clinic to high-tech …


Public Accountability And Medical Device Regulation, Robert B. Leflar Dec 1988

Public Accountability And Medical Device Regulation, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

In enacting the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, Congress instituted a flexible system of regulatory controls over a vast array of health care products. Analyzing the complex statute and its legislative history, Professor Leflar finds at the law's core a structure designed to ensure the Food and Drug Administration's accountability to the public for its regulatory actions. Reviewing the history of FDA's implementation of the medical device law, however, the author demonstrates that FDA has strayed widely and, he contends, illegally from the congressionally mandated structure of public accountability. In particular, in its review of new-model medical devices in the …