Workers' Compensation

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Kaci Hickox Won't Follow Maine Ebola Quarantine Rule, Lawyer Says

PHOTO: Kaci Hickox is pictured in this undated image provided by the University of Texas at Arlington.

Today's post is shared from abcnews.go.com/
Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was quarantined at a New Jersey hospital despite exhibiting no Ebola symptoms after arriving from West Africa, won't follow the quarantine imposed by Maine officials, her attorney said tonight.
"Going forward she does not intend to abide by the quarantine imposed by Maine officials because she is not a risk to others," her attorney Steven Hyman said. "She is asymptomatic and under all the protocols cannot be deemed a medical risk of being contagious to anyone."
Hickox will abide by all the self-monitoring requirements of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state of Maine, Hyman said.
Maine requires that health care workers such as Hickox who return to the state from West Africa will remain under a 21-day home quarantine, with their condition actively monitored, Gov. Paul R. LePage said in a statement.
"We will help make sure the health care worker has everything to make this time as comfortable as possible," he said.
Hickox left University Hospital in Newark Monday afternoon and was taken to Maine, where she lives.
Hickox, 29, was the first person forced into New Jersey's mandatory quarantine after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport Friday. She had previously treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone for Doctors Without Borders, but never registered a...

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Tuesday, October 28, 2014

IMIG 2014: Mesothelioma: Cancer stem cells by defactinib, a novel inhibitor of FAK

Paul Baas summarizes evidence from studies showing specific targeting of cancer stem cells by defactinib, a novel inhibitor of FAK.

Click here to watch Paul Baas

IMIG 2014: Dr. Ravi Salgia presents “From Chaos to Mitochondrial Functionality”

Dr. Salgia summarized efforts from his group to bring mathematical modeling to the study of malignant mesothelioma and how the rules of this theory can be applied to consideration of mutations associated with mesothelioma, suggesting that DNA acts much likes fractals. He emphasized that the fractal dimensionality of mesothelioma cells is dramatically different from that of normal cells and that mitochondrial networks in mesothelioma can also be modeled with fractal analysis. Click here to learn more about this new approach to understanding mesothelioma and the biology of other cancer cells.

Click here to watch Dr. Salgia’s Presentation

Ebola Policies Made in Panic Cause More Damage

With good reason, Americans are deeply confused about the risks of Ebola. It is a frightening disease, made more so by dueling theories about how best to deal with people arriving from West Africa and by wildly different messages — based partly on erroneous information given out by New York City officials — about whether the doctor who returned to New York from treating patients in Guinea and came down with the disease was or was not a danger to others when he moved around the city.

To make matters worse, two ambitious governors — Chris Christie of New Jersey and Andrew Cuomo of New York — fed panic by imposing a new policy of mandatory quarantines for all health care workers returning from the Ebola-stricken countries of West Africa through John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty international airports. There is absolutely no public health justification for mandatory quarantines.
It’s not surprising that they have started to adjust their earlier positions, which seemed politically motivated, as they have come under a barrage of criticism from public health experts for their dangerous overreaction. They now say they will allow health care workers to be confined to their own homes, where they will be checked twice a day by public health officials.
Lost in this grandstanding was one essential point. The danger to the public in New York in the case of Dr. Craig Spencer, who had worked in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders, was close to nonexistent....

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California is most expensive state for workers' comp

Ouch -- the cost of workers' compensation in California is more expensive than any other state in the nation, a new study says.

The Workers' Compensation Premium Rate Ranking Summary from Oregon's Department of
Today's post is shared from
Consumer and Business Services reveals that California businesses spend $3.48 for every $100 of payroll issue on workers' comp expenses.

The ranking demonstrates a trend, as California was the third-most expensive state in 2012 and the fifth-most expensive in 2010, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

The $3.48 mark represent a 188 percent of the median cost of $1.85 for all 50 states.

Separately, a new study looking at the 2013 fee schedule changes projects that California workers comp office visit payments will increase 8 percent overall.

"California's workers' compensation system is incredibly inefficient," said Jerry Azevedo, a spokesman for the California-based Workers' Compensation Action Network, told the Daily News.

Azevedo's group aims to reduce costs for employers and improve services to injured workers.

Second on the list is Connecticut, at $2.87 of every $100 in payroll going toward workers' compensation costs. The top five are rounded out by New Jersey ($2.82), New York ($2.75) and Alaska ($2.68).

Ranking lowest was North Dakota, where a mere 88 cents of every $100 in payroll goes toward workers' comp costs.

Scott Bridges has covered the Los Angeles scene for over ten years as a journalist and food critic. Follow him on the...
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Hospitals’ Struggles To Beat Back Familiar Infections Began Before Ebola Arrived

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from kaiserhealthnews.org

While Ebola stokes public anxiety, more than one in six hospitals — including some top medical centers — are having trouble stamping out less exotic but sometimes deadly infections, federal records show.

Nationally, about one in every 25 hospitalized patients gets an infection, and 75,000 people die each year from them—more than from car crashes and gun shots combined. A Kaiser Health News analysis found 695 hospitals with higher than expected rates for at least one of the six types of infections tracked by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 13 states and the District of Columbia, a quarter or more of hospitals that the government evaluated were rated worse than national benchmarks the CDC set in at least one infection category, the KHN analysis found.

The missteps Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital made this month in handling an Ebola patient echo mistakes hospitals across the nation have made in dealing with homegrown infections. Dr. Kevin Kavanagh, a patient safety expert from Kentucky, said hospitals too often don’t strictly follow protocols to deal with infectious diseases, and the government’s standard responses are not specific enough. “Right now there are too many recommendations on how to handle infectious diseases, too much leeway,” he said.

A 2011 study in the New England Journal of Medicine underscored the problem, observing that while hospitals have reduced the frequency...
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Nurses to Jerry Brown: California isn’t ready for Ebola

Today's post was shared by CAAA and comes from www.sacbee.com

The state’s largest nurses union said Tuesday that no California hospital is prepared to treat an Ebola patient, pressing Gov. Jerry Brown to require increased training and protective equipment for nurses.
The union’s call – and a rebuttal from the California Hospital Association – came as Brown met privately with nurses, public health officials and medical providers to discuss Ebola.
Though there are no known cases of Ebola in California, the virus has gripped public attention since an outbreak in West Africa and the infection of two nurses treating an Ebola patient who died in Texas earlier this month.
The Brown administration issued no mandates but said in a prepared statement that “officials are taking steps to help ensure health care workers, hospitals and first responders are prepared to treat and care for patients with Ebola.”
RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, said California hospitals have failed to provide adequate training or equipment to nurses, a claim hospitals disputed.
“None of the hospitals in California are prepared,” DeMoro said after meeting with Brown. “We cannot name a hospital that we feel comfortable with, for patients in the state of California to attempt to have the appropriate response in an Ebola situation.”
Speaking at a news conference outside Brown’s offices at the Capitol, DeMoro said, “The deficiencies in the...

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Cuomo and Christie's Ebola Tag-Team

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.bloomberg.com

Andrew Cuomo took the low road.
On Thursday night, the night Ebola officially, dauntingly, came to Gothamtown, the governor sat to Mayor Bill de Blasio's left at a news conference and tried to calm New Yorkers’ nerves. The two Democrats appeared at Bellevue Hospital, the country’s oldest continually operating hospital, an international leader in treating infectious diseases and one of eight facilities the state had designated for Ebola treatment. The presence of the governor and mayor, mere floors beneath the room where the infected patient, Dr. Craig Spencer, remained in quarantine, highlighted that the virus does not travel by air. Like President Obama’s hug with Nina Pham—the 26-year-old Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola from Thomas Eric Duncan, and blessedly had overcomethe virus after a period of isolation—their news conference was a gesture meant to reassure the city's anxious citizenry: Ebola is transmitted only through the sharing of bodily fluids. Rest assured, 8.4 million residents of New York City, 19.6 million citizens of New York State. Do not be alarmed.
De Blasio told New Yorkers that the chances of becoming infected by Ebola were vanishingly small. “We have the finest public health system not only anywhere in the country but anywhere in the world,” he said. Cuomo added, “We are as ready as one could be for this circumstance.” On...

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Disabled Vt. Senior Who Led Class Action Suit Sues Medicare — Again

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from kaiserhealthnews.org

A 78-year-old Vermont mother of four who helped change Medicare coverage for millions of other seniors is still fighting to persuade the government to pay for her own care.

Glenda Jimmo, who is legally blind and has a partially amputated leg due to complications from diabetes, was the lead plaintiff in a 2011 class-action lawsuit seeking to broaden Medicare’s criteria for covering physical therapy and other care delivered by skilled professionals. In 2012, the government agreed to settle the case, saying that people cannot be denied coverage solely because they have reached a plateau and are not getting better.

The landmark settlement was a victory for Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions and disabilities who had been frequently denied coverage under what is known as “the improvement standard” —a judgment about whether they are likely to improve if they get additional treatment. It also gave seniors a second chance to appeal for coverage if their claims had been denied because they were not improving.

Jimmo was one of the first seniors to appeal her original claim for home health care under the settlement that bears her name. But in April, the Medicare Appeals Council, the highest appeals level, upheld the denial. The judges said they agreed with the original ruling that her condition was not improving — criteria the settlement was supposed to eliminate.

After running out of options appealing to...

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Where We Are With Obamacare And Where We’re Going

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from kaiserhealthnews.org

An analysis by a team of New York Times reporters finds that after almost a year, the Affordable Care Act has succeeded in delivering on its main promises but has also fallen short in some ways. Other reports look at how consumers could be in for some surprises when open enrollment begins next month, including the possibility of being billed for two different plans, and how the SHOP exchanges for small businesses have gone live in Illinois and Missouri.
The New York Times: Is The Affordable Care Act Working?
After a year fully in place, the Affordable Care Act has largely succeeded in delivering on President Obama’s main promises, an analysis by a team of reporters and data researchers shows. But it has also fallen short in some ways and given rise to a powerful conservative backlash. (10/26)
The New York Times: Insurers’ Consumer Data Isn’t Ready For Enrollees
With health insurance marketplaces about to open for 2015 enrollment, the Obama administration has told insurance companies that it will delay requirements for them to disclose data on the number of people enrolled, the number of claims denied and the costs to consumers for specific services. For months, insurers have been asking the administration if they had to comply with two sections of the Affordable Care Act that require “transparency in coverage.” (Pear, 10/25)
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Healthcare.gov Communication Issues Cast Cloud On Coverage Renewal
If you bought...

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U.S. Moves to End Patchwork of Policies on Returning Ebola Workers

WASHINGTON — The federal government on Monday announced a new set of monitoring guidelines for people arriving from West Africa that stopped short of the tough measures instituted in New York and New Jersey last week, an effort to bring uniformity to a messy patchwork of responses by states.

The new policy, which federal health officials said was an effort to strike a balance between safety and civil liberties, would require returning heath care workers, or people who had been near Ebola patients, to submit to an in-person checkup and a phone call from a local public health authority.

That is looser than the stay-home quarantine policies in New York and New Jersey, and many believed that the long-awaited federal response would be unlikely to satisfy the governors of those states, who believe the government needs to be more proactive in preventing potential Ebola patients from spreading the virus.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who announced the new measures, said: "We believed these are based on science. These add a strong level of protection.”

But the C.D.C. does not have regulatory authority, and it will be up to states to enforce the policy, and a number of states have already indicated that they believe stronger measures should be taken, including Illinois and Florida.

Approximately 100 people a day arrive to the United States from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, most of them American citizens or...

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Monday, October 27, 2014

National Trends and Developments in Workers' Compensation

This brief looks at trends and developments in state workers' compensation systems across the nation over the last 25 years, identifying at least seven that undermine workers' human rights to health and work with dignity. The brief calls for immediate action to end the roll back on injured and ill workers' rights and advocates for broad systemic change based on human rights notions. Workers' comp is one of several systems created through public policy to offer social protection and health care to some people in certain scenarios, which, together, are failing to guarantee everyone access to health care and income support when they need it. It is ultimately the government's responsibility to guarantee and enable all people to enforce their rights to universal health care and a basic income.
Downloads:

Workers Comp Trends and Developments October 2014.pdf

- See more at: http://www.nesri.org/resources/national-trends-and-developments-in-workers-compensation#sthash.nNJrsF3v.dpuf

IMIG 2014: New Molecules and New Therapies – Advancing Mesothelioma Carehttp://imig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/fennell.jpg

Keynote, Dean Fennell presents on treatment developments for mesothelioma

Click here to watch Dean Fennell

Construction worker killed in crash identified

Today's post was shared by Trucker Lawyers and comes from journalstar.com

The death of a construction worker hit by a vehicle on Tuesday as he worked on a highway project south of Tilden is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Alejandro Banueldo-Flores, 59, had worked for Werner Construction Co. for about 30 days and was performing flagging operations on Nebraska 45 around 7:25 p.m. when a southbound vehicle driven by Roger Wynn, 66, of Meadow Grove struck him, according to officials.
Bonita Winingham, OSHA’s area director in Omaha, offered condolences to the family and co-workers of Banueldo-Flores and urged drivers to slow down and be alert for workers.
No arrests or citations had been issued as of Wednesday morning, the Antelope County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. The cause of the crash remains under investigation by the Antelope and Pierce county sheriff’s offices with help from the Nebraska State Patrol.
Antelope County Attorney Joe Abler, who released Banueldo-Flores' name, did not say where the man lived.
OSHA has fined Werner Construction twice, following the deaths of workers in 2009 and 2013, according to a U.S. Labor Department news release.
On Sept. 17, 2013, an employee got caught between a semitrailer and a front-end loader on Nebraska 14 near Albion. OSHA fined the company $10,500 for three violations.
On Oct. 7, 2009, a worker was pulled into a paving machine on a job site along U.S. 275 between Norfolk and Battle Creek. OSHA fined Werner...

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IMIG: Dr. Constantine Alifrangis Speaks on Next Generation Sequencing in Mesothelioma

Dr. Constantine Alifrangis focused on the study of cancer genomes and how it might be used to identify new treatments and individualize care for patients with mesothelioma. These approaches have identified specific genomic alterations in mesothelioma associated with unexpected drug sensitivities in mesothelioma. As for other cancers, study of cancer genomes in mesothelioma has the potential to guide development of novel therapies for this disease.Click here to hear and see more about this work.

Click here to watch Dr. Alifrangis’s Presentation

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Quarantined nurse to CNN: 'My basic human rights' are being violated

Today's post is shared from cnn.com

Kaci Hickox, a nurse placed under mandatory quarantine in New Jersey, went on CNN on Sunday and criticized the "knee-jerk reaction by politicians" to Ebola, saying "to quarantine someone without a better plan in place, without more forethought, is just preposterous."
Hickox, an epidemiologist who was working to help treat Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, has tested negative twice for Ebola and does not have symptoms, she said.
"This is an extreme that is really unacceptable, and I feel like my basic human rights have been violated," Hickox told CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union."
She described herself as "physically strong" but "emotionally exhausted."
"To put me through this emotional and physical stress is completely unacceptable," she said.
She slammed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for describing her as "obviously ill."
"I'm sorry, but that's just a completely unacceptable statement in my opinion. For him -- a politician who's trusted and respected -- to make a statement that's categorically not true is just unacceptable and appalling," Hickox told Elizabeth Cohen, CNN's senior medical correspondent, in a separate interview.
Hickox told Crowley that mandatory quarantine is "not a sound public health decision" and that public health officials -- not politicians...

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Modern Workplaces Add Complexity to Workers' Compenation Cases

Premises liability is a major issue currently in workers' compensation claims as people "work at home." The change by created by eliminating a commute also changes the pattern of risk. While the coming and going rule may be avoided there are other distractions at home that create new issues challenging compensability. Today's post is shared from thelegalintelligencer.com
A day at work isn't always just a day at the office. Attorneys in workers' compensation practice know that all too well. And as technological advances allow more workers to telecommute and correspond on work matters from outside of the office, the conditions surrounding compensable incidents are increasingly complicated.
"The ability of an employer to maintain access to an employee and the ability of an employer to give instructions to an employee remotely have increased," said Edward Neyhart, of the Law Offices of Byrne, Neyhart & Higgins. "As people work remotely more and more and people are engaging in various activities and mobile technology allows people greater access to travel and working away from the office setting, it becomes a much more important issue."
Neyhart said he has been inundated with workers' compensation cases this year, many borne out of a constant connection to the office.
"[These cases] are just the beginning of the pattern of litigation that is going to have to work its way up to the appellate courts," he said. "Employers and insurance companies have to adapt to the changing status of liability."
According to a 2010 survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 24 percent of workers telecommute, meaning they work from home for at least some of their hours each week. That can blur the lines on compensable injuries, especially for those who only work from home sometimes.
"It puts them in the...

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GOP changes tune on cutting Social Security with elections on the line

The focus of the upcoming, expensive, mid-term elections has moved away from Obamacare and toward other issues. This development may impact quite heavily upon medical delivery on a Federal level and may finally be a major concession that Universal Medical will just have to be accepted because of the need to rein in costs and for efficiency. Today's post is shared from washingtonpost.com/

Cutting federal health and retirement spending has long been at the top of the GOP agenda. But with Republicans in striking distance of winning the Senate, they are suddenly blasting the idea of trimming Social Security benefits.
The latest attack came in Georgia, where the National Republican Campaign Committee posted an ad last week accusing Rep. John Barrow (D) of “leaving Georgia seniors behind” by supporting “a plan that would raise the retirement age to 69 while cutting Social Security benefits.”
Crossroads GPS, the conservative nonprofit group founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove, has run similar ads against North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan (D), Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor (D) and Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). Crossroads accused Hagan of supporting a “controversial plan” that “raises the retirement age.”
Pryor’s opponent, Rep. Tom Cotton, meanwhile, is one of at least three Republican candidates in competitive Senate races who have released cheery ads promising to protect Social Security. In Colorado, Rep. Cory Gardner (R) appears in a new ad with his “Grandma Betty” and vows to “honor every penny we promised today’s seniors” — a pledge that seems to conflict with demands by Republican congressional leaders for a less-generous inflation formula to calculate seniors’ cost-of-living increases.
Older voters typically dominate the electorate in non-presidential years, so the resort to...

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Meet the startups trying to stop pedestrian deaths

Distracted walking is a new safety concern. Today's post is shared from theverge.com
As phones get more powerful and screens get bigger, it gets harder and harder to pull our attention away from them, even when it puts us at risk. One place where that unavoidably happens is in the intersections of city streets, where pedestrians, bikers, and drivers meet — sometimes violently.
To try to tackle this problem, AT&T partnered with the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation, the NYC Department of Transportation, educational co-op General Assembly, and software competition site ChallengePost to create Connected Intersections, a four-month developer challenge with the goal of inspiring technologies that can make city streets safer for distracted humans buried in their phones and the people around them.
"Traffic lights can only do so much."
"Pedestrians and cars are kind of at an impasse right now, and it’s getting to a point where real action needs to be taken," Sarah Kaufman of the Rudin Center said at one of the challenge’s developer open houses back in July. "Every two hours a New Yorker is hurt or badly injured, and every 30 hours one is killed in a car crash. So it’s at a point where we have a big opportunity to start using smart technologies to put the power in the people’s hands. Why not put safety in people’s hands? Traffic lights can only do so much."
Connected Intersections ended up collecting 45 ideas from teams in 13 different countries and 26 different states. Eight teams were awarded...

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