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Showing posts with label Pennsylvania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pennsylvania. Show all posts

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Intersex fish found in Pennsylvania rivers spur search for chemicals


Delaware River
Delaware River

Shocking finding about the association of chemical pollution and the sex of fish. Today's post is shared from latimes.com

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection has begun an extensive sampling of chemical contaminants in response to the discovery of intersex fish in three of the state's rivers, a department spokeswoman said.

Male fish carrying eggs were found in the Susquehanna, Delaware and Ohio river basins, a sign that the water may be tainted with chemicals, the U.S. Geological Survey found in research released Monday.

Amanda Witman, a DEP spokeswoman, said the agency is testing two tributaries of the Susquehanna River: Juniata River and Swatara Creek.

The USGS research said that two fish species, smallmouth bass and white sucker, were exhibiting intersex characteristics due to exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals — hormones and hormone-mimicking chemicals that caused the male fish to produce eggs.

"The sources of estrogenic chemicals are most likely complex mixtures from both agricultural sources, such as animal wastes, pesticides and herbicides, and human sources from wastewater treatment plant effluent and other sewage discharges," said Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist and lead author of the USGS study.

Intersex fish found in 3 Pennsylvania river basins
Intersex fish found in 3 Pennsylvania river basins

Estrogenic chemicals disrupt the endocrine system, which regulates the release of hormones such as estrogen and testosterone. This interferes with the fish's ability to reproduce.

Some of the compounds and contaminants found were new, and researchers had to develop new laboratory test procedures...
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Friday, December 6, 2013

Keeping privacy in focus

Confidentiality has been the hallmark of Workers' Compensation since the inception of the program. Has been challenged federally through the portability act concerning the privacy of medical records. All that reach was bad enough, a data breach from and a governmental site is even worse. It is becoming more than obvious, but the weak financial infrastructure, of the patchwork of worker's Compensation systems for the country are creating serious challenges. Instead of attempting to run 50 different programs throughout the country, it is probably A good idea to start looking inward, and establishing a single solid system that can meet the needs required to run A multibillion-dollar benefit system the rep country and also maintain the confidentiality and privacy that the parties participating in it require. Today's post shared from therepublic.com

Hackers gained access to the personal information of about 26,000 Pennsylvanians who use debit cards to receive jobless and workers' compensation benefits, the Pennsylvania Treasury Department said Thursday.
The incident was part of a wider security breach affecting 465,000 holders of JPMorgan Chase & Co. prepaid cash cards nationwide.
The breach affects only cardholders who used the JPMorgan Chase UCard Center website between mid-July and mid-September, the Treasury Department said. Michael Fusco, a spokesman for JPMorgan, said the bank found no evidence any information was used improperly.
JPMorgan first contacted the Pennsylvania Treasury Department on Tuesday, agency spokesman Gary Tuma said.
JPMorgan has referred the matter to law enforcement and would not explain details of how the breach occurred, the Treasury Department said.
The Pennsylvania agency wants details from JPMorgan Chase about the bank's response to the breach, including an explanation for any delay in notifying it and the additional measures it will undertake to protect against a recurrence.
The department said most of the personal information that might have been viewed includes card numbers, dates of birth, user IDs, email addresses. Information on external bank accounts might have been exposed, as well, if a cardholder completed a transaction to it, the department said.
Cardholders are being contacted by letter with instructions and are being urged by JPMorgan Chase in the meantime to...
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Thursday, December 5, 2013

Meet the 32 Senate Republicans Who Voted to Continue LGBT Discrimination in the Workplace

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com
Louie Palu/ZUMA, Jay Mallin/ZUMA, Jeff Cook/ZUMA, Michael Reynolds/ZUMA and Jane Kelly/Shutterstock
On Thursday afternoon, the Senate passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a landmark bill that would end decades of employment discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans. The bill moved forward with support of 54 senators who caucus with the Democrats (Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania didn't vote because he was attending to his wife's surgery) as well as votes from 10 Republicans, only a few months after the Supreme Court ruled that the government must recognize same-sex marriages. But most GOP Senators came out against it, and House Speaker John Boehner has promised to oppose the bill, which means it will likely be killed in the House.
"One party in one house of Congress should not stand in the way of millions of Americans who want to go to work each day and simply be judged by the job they do," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "I urge the House Republican leadership to bring this bill to the floor for a vote and send it to my desk so I can sign it into law."
It's already illegal for companies to discriminate against Americans on the basis of age, disability, gender, race and religion. ENDA would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list, protecting LGBT workers from being fired or denied benefits and promotions based on their sexual identity. (An amendment pushed by Sen. Rob...
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Updates on America's Persistent Air and Water Pollution Challenges


The dirty little secret in the US is that pollution continues of the nation's air and water supply. Today's post is shared from nytimes.com.

Houston cloaked in a haze of pollution on Oct. 23, 2013. Sources range from cars to oil and gas installations and refineries.
Andrew C. RevkinHouston cloaked in a haze of pollution on Oct. 23, 2013. Sources range from cars to oil and gas installations and refineries.
Houston cloaked in a haze of pollution on Oct. 23, 2013. Sources range from cars to oil and gas installations and refineries.Air and water problems mainly make headlines these days when extraordinary pulses of pollution surge in places like Beijing and Shanghai. But there are still enormous, if largely hidden, health and environmental costs in many parts of the United States that have failed to meet the goals set decades ago under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (e.g., see Muller, Mendelsohn, Nordhaus, 2011). Sometimes the issue is visible. I visited Houston briefly this week and snapped the photo above on the airport approach. Not pretty.
Read on for excerpts from two relevant articles. The first, from the Allegheny Front, explores how lessons learned in trying to cut pollution from natural gas facilities in Houston can be applied in Pennsylvania’s fracking zone. The second, by my Pace University colleague and longtime water analyst John Cronin, digs in on the gap between Environmental Protection Agency statements on water pollution and the results in America’s waterways.
Here’s “Houston Air Pollution: Preview for Pennsylvania?” It’s the second article in a planned four-part series, “The Coming Chemical Boom,” that was in part paid for by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
...
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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

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. 

Friday, October 11, 2013

Raising the mandatory judicial retirement age to 80

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

The New York City Bar Association says it supports a proposal on the state’s Nov. 5 ballot to amend the New York Constitution to raise the mandatory retirement age to 80 for state Court of Appeals judges and Supreme Court justices.
The state constitution currently requires all state judges to retire at age 70.
However, judges of the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, and justices of the state’s main trial court, the Supreme Court, may serve for up to six years after retirement so long as court administrators certify every two years that the judge’s services are necessary to expedite the business of the court, and he or she is mentally and physically able and competent to perform the full duties of the office.
“The City Bar supports Proposal 6, consistent with our longstanding position that the mandatory judicial retirement age, which was enacted in 1869, is outdated,” the bar association said in a statement Monday.
“Many individuals who reach the age of 70 have a substantial number of productive years ahead of them. Many states and the federal judiciary permit judges to serve past the age of 70, and New York should as well.”
The association argues that raising the retirement age would ease a strained court system — in particular, permit the transfer of Supreme Court justices to the state’s overburdened family courts.
In Pennsylvania, three groups of judges sued over...
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Friday, October 4, 2013

Federal Shutdown: Is Workers' Compensation Ready for Tropical Storm Karen?

With a Federal Government in a shutdown, will the State Workers' Compensation system be ready for a natural disaster? The public announcements indicate that FEMA will have to ramp up, but will other Federal agencies be ready and reactivated in time? Workers' Compensation will be stressed with emergency responders who become ill and injured as a result of hurricane related activities. One year almost to the Superstorm Hurricane Sandy and recovery efforts are still continuing. Time will tell.......

State emergency management officials on the U.S. Gulf Coast have been assured that the recent shutdown of the federal government will not affect the Federal Emergency Management Administration's response to Tropical Storm Karen.The storm is expected to come ashore late Saturday or early Sunday on the Gulf Coast. A hurricane watch has been issued from southern Louisiana to the western Florida Panhandle.
A hurricane watch means that winds exceeding 74 miles per hour (119 kilometers per hour) are possible within 36 hours. Although Karen could strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the Gulf Coast, forecasters aren't certain that it will maintain that strength until it makes landfall.
Meanwhile, emergency management agencies in the area are conferring with FEMA officials as they prepare for the storm.
A call to FEMA's External Affairs office in Atlanta was answered by a recording saying that its staff had been furloughed because of the federal government shutdown. Calls to FEMA offices in the Gulf Coast region were answered by staffers not authorized to speak on the record. But state emergency management officials said they are talking to FEMA personnel and the  federal agency is preparing to respond to the storm.
"Our director locally has been in touch with FEMA, and he's received every assurance that FEMA will support us," said Mike Steele, communications director for the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in Baton Rouge.
...
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Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Electronic Filing: The Ideal System for Workers' Compensation

Judicial systems throughout the country have been working diligently to obtain the the "best" electronic filing and docketing systems for workers' compensation systems. The Federal Court program, certainly by the devopment of PACER, and the local District Courts and Appellate Circuits, though their Electronic Court Filing  (ECF) systems, have established a systems that are stellar. Working on budgets, funded by no or minimal filing fees, and a huge volume of matters, with specialized interests, the state workers' compensation programs have had a more difficult start and a rougher road to operationalize electronic filing programs and docketing systems. Florida has produced a system that works, provides transparency and success. Today's post, authored by Judge David Langham, Deputy Chief Judge of Compensation Claims for the Florida Office of Judges of Compensation Claims and Division of Administrative Hearings, describes the delicate balance to achieve this result, by balancing the cost of the system and the productivity results.

Pennsylvania launched an integrated electronic management system last week. The Workers' Compensation Automation and Integration System, or WCAIS is described as the first system of its kind. It integrates data-sharing among three Pennsylvania state agencies, the Bureau of Workers' Compensation with the Workers' Compensation Appeal Board and the Workers' Compensation Office of Adjudication."We do not have such an integrated...
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Thursday, September 26, 2013

Work Comp Steps Up to ACA

The Affordable Care Act's impact on workers' compensation is going to take many forms. David DePaolo points out in his shared blog today some of the aspects as the ACA is close to launch. Whether the ACA is going to emasculates the workers' compensation system is yet unknown  It is sure heading that way in the new less litigious and aging society.

One of the big questions I have had since the Affordable Care Act became law was how the workers' compensation underwriting market would react since it seemed that there would be a broadening in the class of health care workers coming into the scene.

That question was given some evidence yesterday when ProAssurance, a writer of medical professional liability insurance based in Birmingham, Ala., announced a proposed acquisition of Pennsylvania-based workers' compensation writer Eastern Insurance Group for $205 million.

Eastern offers workers’ compensation to employers with generally 1,000 employees or less that traditionally pay an average premium per policy of $21,956, according to filings with Securities & Exchange Commission. Also, Eastern concentrates on low- to middle-hazard classes of businesses, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Midwest regions. In 2012, it reported workers comp premiums written of $182.9 million.

Among those employers Eastern counts as policy holders are small hospital systems, long-term care facilities, physician and dental practices and home health care providers....
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Sunday, September 8, 2013

Price of Vicodin Three Times More in Maryland and Pennsylvania When Dispensed by a Physician

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.claimsjournal.com


New studies from Cambridge-based Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) says the average price paid for physician-dispensed Vicodin, a commonly dispensed narcotic pain medication in Maryland and Pennsylvania, was three times more than the price paid for the same drug dispensed at a pharmacy ($1.46 versus $0.37 per pill in Maryland and $1.22 versus $0.37 per pill in Pennsylvania).

According to the studies, the average prices paid to physician-dispensers were often more than double the prices paid for the same drugs dispensed at a pharmacy. Issues related to physician dispensing in Maryland have been debated, but no change has been made.

Physician dispensing has been growing rapidly in Pennsylvania. In 2011, physicians dispensed 23 percent of workers’ compensation prescriptions and were paid 38 percent of what was spent for all prescriptions for injured workers. This was an increase from 17 percent of all prescriptions and 18 percent of total prescription costs three years earlier.

“In many states across the country, policymakers are debating whether doctors should be paid significantly more than pharmacies for dispensing the same drug,” said Dr. Richard Victor, WCRI’s executive director. “One question for policymakers is whether the large price difference paid when physicians dispense is justified by the benefits of physician dispensing.”

The Maryland  study found that prices paid to physician-dispensers for many common drugs...
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Friday, August 30, 2013

Recommended Reading for Back to School: APHA Publishes New Book on Bullying Prevention

Bullying `in the workplace leads to both emotional and traumatic residuals. Recently some high school athletic coaches and instructors were charged with such activity. Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.rwjf.org


DoSomething.org, a service and information website aimed at getting teens involved in their communities, has some startling statistics on bullying:
  • About 160,000 teens skip school each year because of bullying
  • More than 3.2 million students are victims of bullying each year
  • 1 in 7 students in grades K-12 are either a bully or a victim of bullying
  • 71 percent of students report incidents of bullying as a problem at their school
Which is why a new book on bullying prevention, "A Public Health Approach to Bullying Prevention" from the American Public Health Association (APHA), is a welcome addition as the school year starts back up. The new book is intended as a resource for both parents and educators to help stem the problem of bullying at school.

“With its public health perspective and approach, this book can lead us steps closer to eliminating the physical and mental anguish that bullying has on our nation’s children and communities,” said Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the APHA. “The book’s collection of various perspectives offers a comprehensive tool for parents and professionals to ensure healthy and safe schools.”

The book includes successful bullying prevention efforts implemented in southwestern Pennsylvania schools and essays by professionals working to develop approaches that might implement similar success in other U.S. school communities. Authors include psychologists, educators, social workers and public health program...

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Read more about "bullying" and workers' compensation:
Jan 17, 2013
Bullying isn't limited to the schoolyard. Bullying in the workplace is also a hot topic among employment lawyers and human-resource professionals. One study states that 35 percent of employees are bullied at work. In general ...
Nov 20, 2011
Schools systems are an essential source of education for our nation's future workforce. They become a farce when bullying is taught. The following is an editorial from the Star Ledger newspaper: Wayne Hills puts bullies ...
Apr 03, 2013
Bullying isn't limited to the schoolyard. Bullying in the workplace is also a hot topic among employment lawyers and human-resource professionals. One study states that 35 percent of employees are bullied at work. In general ...

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

NJ Denies an Occupational Workers Compensation For Last Exposure Applying Apportionment Rule

A NJ Appellate Court denied an employee workers' compensation benefits by applying an apportionment rule as well as the manifestation of disease doctrine. The employee worked in two states and spend more than 10 times of his working career in Pennsylvania working n a similar job during which time manifestation occurred.


"We do not suggest that there is a mandatory mathematical formula that judges of compensation should apply in calculating the employment exposure of a petitioner as part of Williams's jurisdictional test. Although we might quibble with Judge LaBoy's description of petitioner's exposure as "de minimis," we nevertheless conclude that the sixteen-month exposure was not sufficiently substantial under the totality of the circumstances to constitute injury-conferring jurisdiction in the Division."


McGlinsey v George H. Buchanan Company, Not Reported in A.3d, 2010 WL 3932983 (N.J.Super.A.D.) Decided September 30, 2010


For over 3 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 work related accident and injuries.
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