My job a team clerk had no Procedure manual in place for that position. It had procedures for the medical clerk, but the team clerk had more duties and responsibilities. Procedure manuals are to aid and guide the employee(s) on how to stay within the parameters of a job description, assuming it is written properly. When the employee performs a procedure not included in the job description, a procedures manual tells who can do what procedure and the accepted practice for performing a particular task.
Understanding a medical malpractice action will enable you to practice risk management and avoid and/or reduce instances of Negligence. The doctor whom took care of my mother during her battle with cancer had to weigh the risk of trying different methods of chemotherapy when he didn’t know for sure what type of cancer he was treating.
He gave her two different kinds of chemotherapy at the same time; because he thought she could handle it. She had every side effect listed on the “what to look for” sheets. This is an instance, where a healthcare practitioner fails to exercise ordinary care and the patient “just happens” to be injured. Under the principles of negligence, civil liability exists only in cases in which an act is judicially determined to be wrongful. This could have resulted in a wrongful death had she died from the chemotherapy rather than the cancer.
A Parens patriae would be effective in the event that my mother had not had a Health Care Proxy in place.
My mother’s diagnosis of cancer forced her to establish a durable power of attorney, which is a Health Care Proxy. This was set in place to inform us of what and how things were to be for her healthcare.
My mother’s healthcare was paid by a capitated payment system; as the name implies, based on a payment per person, rather than payment per service. There are several different types of capitation, ranging from relatively modest per member per month (pm, pm) case management payments to primary care....