Physicians do business with many people and entities in their medical practice. This includes patients, billing services, insurance companies (including health maintenance organizations (HMO) and preferred provider organizations (PPO)), liability insurance providers, government providers (such as Medicare and Medi-Cal), and governing agencies (such as the Medical Board of California (MBC) Read more…
On March 6, 2013, the Board of Optometry will be having a Board Meeting to discuss changes to California Code of Regulations (CCR) section 1575, regarding the Uniform Standards Related to Substance Abuse and Disciplinary Guidelines. The changes to be discussed were originally proposed in December 2011, in response to Read more…
(The following blog post will also appear in PT Interventions, the semi-annual, members-only, newsletter of the California Physical Therapy Association.) As physical therapy professionals know by now, the Physical Therapy Board of California (“Board”) issued new regulations on medical recordkeeping and supervision of assistive personnel, which became effective July 14, Read more…
The state of California offers the Partnership for Long Term Care (“Partnership”) as a statewide program dealing specifically with issues of long term health care. It is “dedicated to educating Californians on the need to plan ahead for their future long-term care and to consider private insurance as a vehicle Read more…
California law requires certain peer review organizations responsible for reviewing the medical care of physicians to make reports regarding physicians to the Medical Board of California (“Board”). And these reports can trigger Board investigations and even license discipline. This is the often misunderstood – but almost always detrimental – “805 Read more…
On January 1, 2013, Senate Bill 1215 went into effect. This Board of Optometry-sponsored bill created two retired license statuses, and updated Business and Professions Code section 3070 pertaining to the mandatory notification of addresses for the practice of optometry. The new retired license statuses are currently not available. That Read more…
It is important for all members in an animal health care team to understand and know their roles. Often a Registered Veterinary Technician (“RVT”) and an unregistered veterinary assistant’s (“assistant”) roles can overlap but a veterinarian or a RVT, may be subject to discipline by the Veterinary Medical Board (“VMB”) Read more…
The Los Angeles District Attorney is prosecuting a doctor for second degree murder in the deaths of three of her patients. Hsui-Ying “Lisa” Tseng, D.O. faces a total of 24 felony counts, including three second degree murder charges resulting from her alleged habitual practice of overprescribing drugs, often without the Read more…
The California Physical Therapy Association will be having its 2012 annual conference next week Friday through Sunday (September 28-30) in Santa Clara, California, at the Santa Clara Convention Center and Hyatt Regency Hotel. According to James Syms, PT, DSc, ATC, SCS, six reasons for California physical therapists (PT) and PT Read more…
The attorneys at Simas & Associates, Ltd. are seeing increasing numbers of Veterinary Medical Board (“Board”) investigations where veterinarians are attempting to respond to the Board’s investigation of them on their own. Unfortunately, this is resulting in extreme negative consequences for the veterinarians that are simply not foreseeable other than Read more…