Stories about physicians and other healthcare professionals involved in lawsuits—as either a plaintiff or a defendant—or accused of breaking the law. Various legal updates or unusual stories in the news may land here.
Authorities said Shane Daley, 40, began making threatening calls mere hours after Brian Thompson was shot and killed outside a hotel in Manhattan. Daley awaits sentencing and faces up to five years in prison.
Judge Brian Murphy with the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts sided with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other plaintiffs who challenged the authority of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr to effectively remove the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from the process put in place to make changes to CDC vaccine recommendations.
A jury sentenced the former cardiovascular ICU nurse to death for intentionally murdering multiple heart patients. In one TV interview, he said the power associated with the murders became "an addiction" over time.
The caper was carried out by a former employee of Nuance Communications, a Microsoft subsidiary. According to court documents, the man used his credentials to access patient data from 1.3 million patients at Geisinger. Police said they found the trove stored on a flash drive in his car.
GuardDog admitted to accessing medical histories from patients stored on Epic’s platform, selling some of them to law firms engaged in unrelated civil litigation. The primary defendant in Epic’s lawsuit, Health Gorilla, maintains it did nothing wrong and accuses Epic of stifling interoperability.
The HHS Office for Civil Rights said it is investigating a "major" health system in Michigan that may have fired an employee for refusing to use a patient's preferred pronouns—meaning those that align with gender identity rather than biological sex. The agency contends that such compelled speech may violate federal laws protecting religious freedom.
Gregory R. Ball, MD, filed the complaint against Southtowns Radiology Associates in February, and the practice is now asking a judge to reject his allegations.
The information was deleted to comply with an executive order from President Trump that censored content related to “gender ideology.” However, a federal judge has ordered the content restored as a court battle looms.
A report from the Guardian details how the VA removed language protecting patients from discrimination based on political affiliation and lifestyle. The department denies that there has been any actual change in policy.
Law firm Wright & Schulte said they filed a legal complaint on behalf of patients, pointing to the health system’s alleged lack of transparency and negligence in protecting data as the basis for the lawsuit.