*Registration   *Agenda   *Faculty   *CE Credit   *Syllabus   *Flyer   *Learning Objectives

Course Description and Target Audience
This course is an examination of “medical jurisprudence,” which is the law, legal system, and legal reasoning related to medicine.  This introduction to health law undertakes a survey of legal issues in medicine focusing on the four ultimate health care system concerns: quality; autonomy, or personhood; equitable access; and cost.

Coverage includes: (a) introduction to law, the legal system, and legal reasoning; (b) quality control regulation through licensing of health care professionals; (c) the physician-patient relationship, informed consent, and confidentiality; (d) professional liability and reforming the tort system for medical injuries; (e) cost and access to health care in the health care delivery system; (f) professional relationships in health care enterprises, staff privileges, managed care contracts, labor and employment, and discrimination law; (g) Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse, false claims, and Stark Law self-referrals; (h) reproduction and birth, legal status of the embryo/fetus, medical intervention in reproduction, and fetal maternal decision-making; (i) legal issues in human genetics; and (j) life and death decisions, advance directives, withholding/withdrawing life support, treatment refusal for religious reasons, decisional capacity and guardianship, deciding for children, and futile treatment.

Agenda

Session One       
Tuesday, January 5, 3-5 p.m.
Introduction

• Introduction to law, the legal system, and legal reasoning
• Instruction on briefing court cases

Session Two
Wednesday, January 6, 3-5 p.m.
Benchmarks for Measuring Developments in Health Law

• Legal Perspectives on Defining Sickness, Quality, and the Problem of Medical Error
• Distributive Justice and Resource Allocation (the Example of Human Organ Transplantation)
• The Constitutional Foundation of Public Health Law (Forced Treatment, Isolation, and Quarantine)

Session Three   
Tuesday, January 12, 3-5 p.m.
Promoting Quality: Quality Control Regulation through Licensing of Health Care Professionals

Session Four   
Wednesday, January 13, 3-5 p.m.
The Physician-Patient Relationship: The Contract Between Patient and Physician

Session Five   
Wednesday, January 20, 3-5 p.m.
Informed Consent: The Physician’s Obligation

Session Six   
Friday, January 22, 3-5 p.m.
Confidentiality and Disclosure in the Physician-Patient Relationship

Session Seven       
Tuesday, January 26, 3-5 p.m.
Liability of Health Care Professionals

Session Eight   
Wednesday, January 27, 3-5 p.m.
Liability of Health Care Professionals (Defenses to a Malpractice Suit) and Reforming the Tort System for Medical Injuries

Session Nine   
Tuesday, February 9, 1-3 p.m.
Cost and Access to Health Care in the Health Care Delivery System: The Policy Context, and the Obligation to Provide Care

Session Ten
Wednesday, February 10, 3-5 p.m.
Professional Relationships in Health Care Enterprises

Session Eleven   
Wednesday, February 17, 3-5 p.m.
Fraud and Abuse: Regulatory Control of Providers’ Financial Relationships

Session Twelve       
Thursday, February 18, 3-5 p.m.
Bioethics- Legal Issues in Human Reproduction and Birth

Session Thirteen   
Tuesday, February 23, 1-3 p.m.
Bioethics- Legal Issues in Fetal Maternal Decisionmaking

Session Fourteen   
Wednesday, February 24, 3-5 p.m.
Bioethics- Legal, Social and Ethical Issues in Human Genetics; Defining Death

Session Fifteen   
Tuesday, March 2, 1-3 p.m.
Bioethics - Legal Issues in Life and Death Decisions

Session Sixteen   
Wednesday, March 3, 3-5 p.m.
The “Right to Die” for Children and Newborns; Physician Assisted Death; Interdisciplinary Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Ethics Committees


Faculty
Winsor C. Schmidt, J.D., LL.M.
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Professor of Family and Geriatric Medicine
Professor of Health Management and Systems Sciences
Endowed Chair/ Distinguished Scholar in Urban Health Policy
University of Louisville School of Medicine
Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine
Louisville, Kentucky


Continuing Education Credit
Physician Credit - The University of Louisville Continuing Health Sciences Education office designates this educational activity for a maximum of 32.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ (2.0 hours per session). Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.


Registration
There is no charge for registration, but advance registration is required. Participants may register for as many or as few of the 16 sessions as they wish.

To Register For All 16 Sessions, Click Here

To Register For Any Or All January Sessions, Click Here

To Register For Any Or All Feb./March Sessions, Click Here


Driving Directions
For driving directions, go to http://www.mapquest.com


Syllabus
For a copy of the syllabus, click here.


Flyer
For a copy of the course flyer, click here.


Learning Objectives

• To define sickness, quality, and medical error in various legal contexts.
• To comprehend how the law addresses the problem of medical error.
• To describe distributive justice and the allocation of health care resources using the example of human organ transplantation.
• To determine how law regulates quality through licensing of health care professionals in the contexts of discipline, complementary and alternative medicine, unlicensed providers, and scope of practice.
• To understand the contract between patient and physician including the express and implied contract, physicians in institutions, specific promises and warranties of cure, exculpatory clauses, and partial limitations on the right to sue.
• To understand the origins and legal framework of informed consent, including negligence as a basis of recovery, the disclosure of physician-specific risk information, the disclosure of statistical mortality information, the disclosure of risks of non-treatment, and the disclosure of physician conflicts of interest.
• To analyze causation complexities, damage issues and punitive damages, and exceptions to the legal duty to disclose.
• To understand the health care institution’s obligation regarding informed consent.
• To understand confidentiality and disclosure in the physician-patient relationship, including breaches of confidence, duties to protect third parties, confidentiality and disclosure of AIDS-related information, and federal medical privacy standards (e.g., HIPAA- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).
• To understand how the standard of care is established, including practice guidelines as codified standards of care, examination of expert witnesses, defendant admissions, medical expert plaintiffs, common knowledge, res ipsa loquitur, and strict liability.
• To examine judicial balancing of risk and benefit.
• To define plaintiff theories of negligent infliction of emotional distress, duties to contest reimbursement limits, and fraudulent concealment and spoliation of evidence.
• To define the respectable minority rule, practice guidelines as an affirmative defense, clinical innovation, Good Samaritan acts, and contributory fault of the patient.
• To understand causation problems of delayed, uncertain, or shared responsibility in the contexts of the discovery rule, multiple defendants, and the alternative causal tests.
• To define the damages innovations of the “loss of a chance” doctrine, and increased risks and  “fear of the future”.
• To discuss the policy context for the problems of health care access and cost.
• To assess approaches to expanding access and controlling costs, including: public health insurance, encouraging the purchase of private insurance, cost control regulation, managed competition, managed care, and health savings accounts.
• To recognize a physician’s and a hospital’s legal duty to treat.
• To identify statutory exceptions to the common law: EMTALA, ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Title VI.
• To identify legal issues in staff privileges and hospital-physician contracts.
• To identify legal issues in managed care contracts for professional services.
• To identify legal issues in health care labor and employment, including employment-at-will, the National Labor Relations Act (physician unions), and discrimination law.
• To explain legal issues regarding false claims, Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse, The Ethics in Patient Referrals Act (Stark I) and Stark II (part of the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), and state statutes and alternative approaches to referrals and fee-splitting.
• To define when human life becomes a legal person.
• To illustrate legal contexts for medical intervention in reproduction (contraception, abortion, sterilization, tort remedies of wrongful birth, wrongful life and wrongful conception).
• To describe legal contexts for facilitating reproduction (artificial insemination; in vitro fertilization, egg transfer and embryo transfer).
• To describe legal contexts for facilitating reproduction (surrogacy; cloning and stem cell research).
• To understand the legal context for fetal maternal decision-making.
• To identify legal, social and ethical issues in human genetics (legal responses to privacy, confidentiality, discrimination, commercialization).
• To recognize issues in defining legal death (development of the “brain death” definition; anencephalic infants; religious objections; patient definition; individual choice).
• To discuss the legal context for life and death decisions (principles of autonomy and beneficence; the constitutional “right to die”; the right to die for patients with decisional capacity).
• To explain the right to die for patients without decisional capacity.
• To explain the right to die for children and newborns.
• To compare criminal and civil liability in right to die cases.
• To identify legal issues in physician assisted death.
• To describe the legal context for interdisciplinary decision-making in healthcare (IRBs, ethics committees, and advisory committees).

Special Services
If you need special accommodations due to a disability, or for an alternative form of course materials, please contact us at chse@louisville.edu. Continuing Health Sciences Education fully complies with the legal requirements of the ADA and the rules and regulations thereof.


Accreditation
The University of Louisville School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.