Workers' Compensation: Jon

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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Formaldehyde Spill At Southern Ocean Medical Center; Three Treated For Inhalation

A formaldehyde spill at Southern Ocean Medical Center on Monday caused three hospital employees to be treated for inhalation of the known carcinogen.

At 10:14 a.m., Stafford Township Police responded to a report of a hazardous material spill at SOCH on Route 72 in Stafford Township.

Investigation revealed that a small quantity of formaldehyde was spilled in a utility closet located in the Labor and Delivery area of the hospital. The spill was contained to the utility closet and no evacuations were necessary, police said.

No patients were injured in this incident but three hospital employees were treated for minor inhalation injuries and released, police said.

Responding agencies included the Stafford Township and Barnegat Township Volunteer Fire Companies as well as Stafford Township EMS.

The Berkeley Township Haz-Mat Unit responded and neutralized and contained the spill which is being cleaned up by a private contractor engaged by Southern Ocean Medical Center.

Questions concerning this release may be directed to Capt. Thomas Dellane at 609-597-1189 ext. 8299.

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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Friday, November 22, 2013

Overlooked Lymph Nodes in Rib Cage Have Prognostic Power for Mesothelioma Patients

A potential tool to diagnosis and treatment mesothelioma has been reported.

For the first time, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown the predictive power of a group of overlooked lymph nodes--known as the posterior intercostal lymph nodes--that could serve as a better tool to stage and ultimately treat patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.

The findings were presented October 28 at the 15th World Conference on Lung Cancer.
Physicians look to lymph nodes to stage essentially all cancers, including mesothelioma. The presence or absence of metastatic cancer cells in lymph nodes affects prognosis and also typically dictates the optimal treatment strategy. But posterior intercostal lymph nodes, which are located between the ribs near the spine, have not been previously used to stage or guide treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma or any other cancer.

New Scrutiny for Medical Devices

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from well.blogs.nytimes.com

Metal-on-metal replacement hips remain high-risk, but other devices are to be downgraded.

Wayne Schneider’s heart stopped beating late last year while the Minneapolis paramedic was out on an emergency call.

Another medic performed CPR for a few minutes, and then used a medical device that delivered cardiac compressions mechanically for 64 minutes, until Mr. Schneider’s heart started beating normally on its own.

“I’m not sure people would have been able to sustain manual CPR for so long,” said Mr. Schneider, 57. “I’m a lucky guy.”

Electronic Filing in Workers Compensation: One National System

By Jon Gelman from Jon L Gelman LLC

Pennsylvania is down, New Jersey is up, and Florida is just ahead of the curve, on workers’ compensation docketing and statistical reporting programs. Reliability, accuracy and utility and necessary components to a model system.

Costs from development to deployment, to upgrade and usage become compounded by glitches and downtime. Redeveloping the wheel for every software browser upgrade and development merely adds to the cost and loss of time.

Nationally the best system has been the Federal Court Electronic Filing System (EFS) along with the public access system PACER. Handling a universal docket of civil, criminal and bankruptcy actions the system is stellar, and gets better with every new software upgrade

Even though there are many unique local District Courts, and Circuit Court of Appeals Rules, that require adherence, the system integrates functionality that makes it easy and consistent in filing and handling claims.

A universally consistent protocol for handling court related data would allow integration throughout all jurisdictions national. While workers’ compensation has its own particular issues in each jurisdiction, the basic theory and practice is essentially the same.

While some integration of data is universally being proposed under The Smart Act regulations, and other Medicare Secondary Payer Act requirements, the processes are national and universal data integration with an uniform patchwork of claims processes, is tedious and difficult to adoption by local jurisdictions at the present time.

Integration of information is not unusual. The major credit reports companies already have collected national individual data. Likewise, The Index Bureau collects data nationally on injuries and claims for the insurance companies. In fact, Federal agencies like the Social Security Administration already access this data.

The writing is obviously on the wall, and has been since CMS initially promulgated the Patel memorandum July 16, 2001, concerning both collection procedures and future medical allowances.

The tedium of prosecuting a Workers’ Compensation claim, and it’s ultimate adjudication, is an onerous task that seems to be getting much worse because of collection of data requirements and a transient population and multi-jurisdictional employers. Dual jurisdiction claims, collateral liens, pre-existing medical conditions, and the collection of medical data are also problematic. Cottages industries are now emasculating the workers’ compensation premium dollar by offering individual State solutions.

It is is time for the establishment of a national workers’ compensation docket system and case filing program that would integrate all jurisdictions and help the system stay an efficient, summary and remedial system that its crafter envisioned a century ago.

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Monday, September 16, 2013

Tips and Poverty

In the calcuation of wages and rates of benefits, most state workers' compensation programs incoporate tips. Elimination of tips, would eliminated added coverage benefits paid under workers' compensation programs.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

When The Times’s restaurant critic, Pete Wells, recently called tipping “irrational, outdated, ineffective, confusing, prone to abuse and sometimes discriminatory,” he was referring mainly to mid- to high-priced restaurants that are considering an end to the practice in favor of surcharges or service-included pricing.

In the diners and other more “value oriented” restaurants that employ most of the nation’s burgeoning ranks of waitresses (the vast majority of servers are female), tips are all that and more. They are part of a parallel economic universe in which employers are allowed to pay sub-minimum wages, with predictably devastating results. According to census data, servers are far more likely than other workers to live in poverty.

It is a national disgrace when hard work, in any industry, leaves workers in poverty. But falling living standards and economic hardship among tipped workers signal prolonged stagnation throughout the economy. That’s because employment growth in restaurants and bars has outpaced growth in nearly all other sectors in recent years, including health care, manufacturing, retail and financial services.

If wages in food-service and other service jobs are not lifted, it is hard to see where adequate consumer demand will come from to generate and sustain a real recovery.

It is not tipping that most needs to end, however. What needs to change is the federal law that sets the minimum wage for tipped workers...

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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What to Do About Futile Critical Care

The last year of an injured worker's life is probably the most expensive for medical costs. Usually such expenses account for 50% of lifetime care costs. Associated with a work-related claim researchers are struggling how to limit unnecessary costs and maintain ethical and moral responsibilities. Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com

By Neil S. Wenger, MD

Thanks to extraordinary advances in medicine, critical care providers can save lives even when the cards are stacked against their patients. However, there are times when no amount of care, however cutting-edge it is, will save a patient. In these instances, when physicians recognize that patients will not be rescued, further critical care is said to be “futile.” In a new study, my RAND and UCLA colleagues and I find that critical care therapies that physicians regard as “futile” are not uncommon in intensive care units, raising some uncomfortable questions.

Of course, we’re fortunate to have such fantastic technology at our disposal — but we must address how to use it appropriately when the patient may not benefit from high-intensity measures. When aggressive critical care is unsuccessful at achieving an acceptable level of health for the patient, treatment should focus on palliative care.

In our study, my colleagues and I quantified the prevalence and cost of “futile” critical care in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. This can be seen as the first step toward reevaluating the status quo and better optimizing care for critical care patients.

After convening a group of critical care clinicians to determine a consensus definition of “futile treatment,” our research team analyzed nearly 7,000 daily assessments of more than 1,000 patients.
We found that 11 percent received futile...

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Needlestick Injuries Are a Costly Problem for the Health Care Industry (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
US Supreme Court Asked to Review MSP Preemption Issue (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Statement on malignant mesothelioma in the United Kingdom (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Health Law Adds New Expense For Farmers: Insurance For Field Workers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Despite backlogs, VA disability claims processors get bonuses (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
CA DWC Posts Proposed Changes to the Medical Treatment Utilization Schedule Regulations Online for Public Comment (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Formaldehyde Spill At Southern Ocean Medical Center; Three Treated For Inhalation

Friday, November 22, 2013