Healthcare Providers and Social Media

The American Medical Association has issued a new policy on the use of social media (AMA Issues New Policy To Guide Physicians’ Use of Social Media on the Health Care Law Blog). The new policy "aims at helping physicians to maintain a positive online presence and preserve the integrity of the patient-physician relationship."

Do you think that the AMA guidelines would be helpful for other types of healthcare providers, such as midwives, doulas, chiropractors, and so on? Although these types of providers often have a much closer, personal relationship with their clients than do medical doctors, it is always a good idea to protect client's privacy (whether or not the provider is a HIPAA-covered entity) and to separate personal and professional online content.

Informed Consent

Midwife Thinking sums up informed consent, according to Australian law.

Legal Rights and VBAC

The Giving Birth With Confidence blog has a new series titled A Woman’s Guide to VBAC: Navigating the NIH Consensus Recommendations. It includes a section on Legal Rights and Protections for VBAC [Vaginal Birth After Cesarean].

Midwives in Australia

Private Midwife Melissa Maimann explains the current legal situation in Australia in Homebirth is not illegal!

Midwifery Legal/Legislative Updates

I do mean to post these more often...

In Florida, an appeals court confirmed the conviction of Tanya and Linda McGlade for practicing midwifery without a license. The two were charged after the 2004 childbirth death of a family member. Both women have been sentenced to a year in prison, but had been released pending appeal ("Two women lose appeals in midwifery convictions").

North Carolina's effort to pass licensing legislation is reportedly dead ("Midwife Supporters Will Push Again Next Session").

Pumping at Work

Lawyer Jake Aryeh Marcus asks you to Curb Your Enthusiasm about the new Federal workplace pumping law on her blog, Sustainable Mothering. Also check out, for comparison's sake, The risks of noncompliance with Oregon's milk expression law by Marion Rice of Nursing Mothers Counsel.

Pumping at Work

The Washington Business Journal reports on the workplace-pumping provisions of the new health care package, focusing on the business aspects. Check out these facts about why businesses should support lactating women in the workplace:

In 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services outlined the bottom-line business benefits of accommodating breast-feeding mothers. They include:

○ Breast-feeding employees miss work less often. Mothers of formula-fed infants take more than twice as many days off to care for sick children. Maternal milk boosts an infant’s immune system and helps protect the baby from common childhood illnesses and infections — a particularly high risk for children in day care. Health insurer Cigna Corp. conducted a two-year study of 343 employees who participated in their lactation support program. Among other things, the program saved $600,000 by reducing absenteeism rates.

○ Breast-feeding lowers health care costs. Cigna’s program resulted in annual savings of $240,000 in health care expenses and 62 percent fewer prescriptions. The reduced health care costs for breast-fed infants translate into lower medical insurance claims for businesses. Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. had a similar program and found that health care costs for its working mother employees who did not breast-feed were $2,146 higher per person.

○ Workplace lactation support programs can improve employee retention rates. One study of several companies with lactation support programs showed that 94.2 percent of working mothers returned to their employers after maternity leave when lactation support programs were in place. That compares to the national average retention rate of just 59 percent. Another study estimates that companies save $75,000 for each employee who returns to the workplace after childbirth.

Vegetable purees can not be copyrighted

Says a New York federal appeals court (AP via law.com). Jessica Seinfeld was sued for trademark and copyright violations after her book, Deceptively Delicious (reviewed here) was published about the same time as Missy Chase Lapine's The Sneaky Chef. Both cookbooks involve sneaking vegetable purees into kid's foods. Lapine also sued Jessica's husband, commedian Jerry Seinfeld, for defamation based on comments he made on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Jury Duty

Kellymom has a nice collection of resources regarding jury duty for breastfeeding moms.

Legal warning over umbilical cord blood collection

Interesting article about cord blood collection in the UK - Legal warning over umbilical cord blood collection. The article implies that is illegal to collect cord blood without a license; however, a lack of uniformity among hospital policies, with some hospitals not allowing collection, leads some parents to take matters into their own hands:

The Human Tissue Authority (HTA) has written to more than 150 organisations following concerns that parents, including new fathers, are collecting the blood themselves using kits delivered to their homes.

Some midwives have said they are being put under pressure to collect the blood illegally and there are fears this could be compromising patient care.

The Royal College of Midwives supports the HTA's actions, saying, "[t]he time during the birth when cord blood is collected is one of the riskiest times, in terms of safety. Therefore, it is essential that midwives are able to concentrate on the birth and are not put under pressure to carry out unregulated and unlawful cord blood collections."

Pregnant and Shackled

RH Reality Check's Aimee Newman examines Washington state's proposed legislation which would ban on the shackling of pregnant incarcerated women or youth in almost all circumstances. Newman points out that the majority of women in prison are first-time, non-violent offenders. And a startling 5% of incarcerated women in the US are pregnant.

New America Media reports on the shackling of pregnant undocumented immigrants in Arizona; and check out Boulder Weekly's Pregnant in Prison.

Lawyer Moms

I've added a few more blog links to my side bar. A Lawyer Mom's Musings has been caustically blogging since 2008. The Unnecesarian, one of my favorite daily reads, has recently gone to a group-blog format, introducing Mysteria a/k/a ANaturalAdvocate, who is a recent law school graduate and future bar-taker. And Sara has been blogging lightly, yet insightfully, for about a year at D is for Doula. The last two join the small sorority of what I term "birthy lawyers".

ETA: You may notice that I've added a list of Delicious Bookmarks. These are not bookmarks that taste good; it's merely interesting article that I've come across that I want to share, but don't necessarily want to blog about.

Pit Police

What will it take for me to break my 10-month-long blogging silence (more on that later)? This situation out of Australia (HT The Unnecesarian). Although the health service has since apologized, it is things like this make me truly afraid for the direction our civilization is heading.