New Orleans psychologist sues over negative Angie's List comments

By Michelle Keahey
The Lousiana Record
Originally published May 28, 2012

A New Orleans psychologist has filed a lawsuit against a Florida doctor for negative comments posted on the website Angie's List.


John C. Courtney, Psy D., MP filed the lawsuit against Dr. Bartholomew Vereb and Angie's List Inc. on March 9 in federal court in New Orleans.
 
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Angie's List is accused of negligence for failing to follow its own procedures that would have prevented Courtney's damages, for breaching its duty to Courtney, and for acting with reckless disregard for the truth.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Ken Pope for this information.

Plastic surgeon suing 10 patients for posting anonymous complaints online

The Palm Beach News

WFTV.com
Originally published May 23, 2012

An Orlando plastic surgeon has posted his explanation on the Internet as to why he's suing several of his patients.

WFTV learned Dr. Armando Soto is suing 10 patients who he said anonymously posted comments online about their bad experiences inside his office in the Dr. Phillip’s neighborhood.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Ken Pope for the above link.

Dr. Soto's blog is here.

Here is a portion of his blog post.

"In sum, a previously unhappy patient is now on the road to a better outcome, with restoration of a healthier doctor/patient relationship. To us, that’s a great outcome."

Vignette 14: The Psychology of Advertising

Dr. Ron Popeil, a local psychologist, is upgrading his web site.  Along with a variety of upgrades, the web developer/consultant suggests that he add a testimonial page where former patients describe their positive experiences in therapy.  Since the web developer/consultant wants to get that page up and running, he suggests that they use some positive ratings and responses from Angie’s list and several other ratings sites that tell positive stories and experiences with Dr. Popeil.

Dr. Popeil thinks these ideas are good.  However, he researches the APA Ethics Code and believes that he may be acting inappropriately.  To discuss the matter in further detail,  Dr. Popeil calls you for an ethics consult.

What are the ethical issues involved in this situation?

Are there any other concerns about the web developer/consultant’s strategies?

What are some recommendations that you would make to the psychologist?

Missouri Psychologist Indicted for Health Care Fraud

by Staff Reporters
Kansas City InfoZine
Originally published May 27, 2012

Rhett E. McCarty, 67, of Lake Ozark, Mo., was charged in a two-count indictment returned under seal by a federal grand jury in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday, May 23, 2012. The indictment was unsealed and made public today upon McCarty’s arrest and initial court appearance in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo.

McCarty is a licensed psychologist and private practitioner who provided psychotherapy services to recipients of both Medicare and Medicaid in their homes in the Lebanon area. The federal indictment alleges that since Aug. 22, 2008, McCarty has submitted Medicare and Medicaid claims for at least 19 beneficiaries for which he was paid $1,276,334.

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According to the indictment, McCarty forged (or caused another person to forge) the signatures of beneficiaries on patient sign-in sheets in order to obtain $418,507 in Medicare and Medicaid payments.

The whole story is here.

Paulucci psychologist suspended, fined $50K by state board

A Minnesota psychologist who charged thousands of dollars to organize a client’s closets, attend a funeral and visit a gravesite — and accepted dozens of expensive gifts from the client, Gina Paulucci of Wayzata — was suspended indefinitely and fined $50,000 for her actions, according to a Minnesota Board of Psychology order made public this week.

by Jane Friedman
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Originally published May 25, 2012

A Roseville psychologist who charged thousands of dollars to organize a client’s closets, attend a funeral and visit a gravesite — and accepted dozens of expensive gifts from the client, Gina Paulucci of Wayzata — was suspended indefinitely and fined $50,000 for her actions, according to a Minnesota Board of Psychology order made public this week.

Kathryne Sanders, 63, acknowledged in an interview that her professional relationship with the client went over the line, but said her career as a psychologist is likely over, so she won’t have to pay the record fine due upon reinstatement.

State law requires psychologists to observe strict boundaries between professional and personal relationships, and Sanders said “there were definitely issues there. But I also think this is something that is extremely common. I just don’t think it’s deserving of the penalty that I received.”

The entire story is here.

Bias found in mental health drug research presented at major psychiatric meeting

Medical Express.com

When thousands of psychiatrists attend their field's largest annual meeting each year, the presentations they hear about research into drug treatments report overwhelmingly on positive results.

That's the finding of a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology by two young psychiatrists from the University of Michigan and Yale University, who analyzed the presentations given at two recent meetings of the American Psychiatric Association.

Of 278 studies presented at the 2009 and 2010 APA meetings that compared at least two medicines against each other for any psychiatric illness, they found that 195 had been supported by industry, and 83 funded by other means. The authors then evaluated the studies without knowing which kind of support each one had.

Of the industry-supported studies, 97.4 percent reported results that were positive toward the medicine that the study was designed to test, and 2.6 percent reported mixed results. No industry-sponsored studies with negative results were found.

The entire article is here.

The journal article can be purchased here.

Outpatient Care of Young People After Emergency Treatment of Deliberate Self-Harm

By Dennis Thompson
MedicineNet.com
Originally published on May 25, 2012


Doctors have long known that some kids suffering severe emotional turmoil find relief in physical pain -- cutting or burning or sticking themselves with pins to achieve a form of release.

But researchers now are questioning whether enough is being done to reach out to these young people and help them before they do themselves irreparable damage.

One study this year found that six of every 10 adolescents who went to an emergency room for treatment after harming themselves were released without receiving a mental health assessment or any follow-up mental health care. The findings were reported in the February issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Here is a link to the summary of this article.

The original research is below.

by Jeffrey Bridge, Steven Marcus, and Mark Olfson

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Volume 51, Issue 2 , Pages 213-222.e1, February 2012

Objective

Little is known about the mental health care received by young people after an episode of deliberate self-harm. This study examined predictors of emergency department (ED) discharge, mental health assessments in the ED, and follow-up outpatient mental health care for Medicaid-covered youth with deliberate self-harm.

Method

A retrospective longitudinal cohort analysis was conducted of national 2006 Medicaid claims data supplemented with the Area Resource File and a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Medicaid policy survey of state policy characteristics focusing on ED treatment episodes by youth 10 to 19 years old for deliberate self-harm (n = 3,241). Rates and adjusted risk ratios (ARR) of discharge to the community, mental health assessments in the ED, and outpatient visits during the 30 days after the ED visit were assessed.

Results

Most patients (72.9%) were discharged to the community. Discharge was inversely related to recent psychiatric hospitalization (ARR 0.75, 99% confidence interval [CI] 0.63–0.90). Thirty-nine percent of discharged patients received a mental health assessment in the ED and a roughly similar percentage (43.0%) received follow-up outpatient mental health care. Follow-up mental health care was directly related to recent outpatient (ARR 2.58, 99% CI 2.27–2.94) and inpatient (ARR 1.33, 99% CI 1.14–1.56) mental health care and inversely related to Hispanic ethnicity (ARR 0.78, 99% CI 0.64–0.95) and residence in a county with medium-to-high poverty rates (ARR 0.84, 99% CI 0.73–0.97).

Conclusions

A substantial proportion of young Medicaid beneficiaries who present to EDs with deliberate self-harm are discharged to the community and do not receive emergency mental health assessments or follow-up outpatient mental health care.

Psychiatric Patients Languish In Emergency Rooms

By Eric Whitney
Colorado Public Radio in conjunction with Kaiser Health News
Originally published May 31, 2012

Last fall Kathy Partridge got a phone call from a local emergency room, telling her that her daughter, Jessie Glasscock, was there -- and was OK. Glasscock had gone missing overnight.  She was away at college, and had a history of manic episodes. Police had found her in a dumpster and brought her to the ER for her own safety.  It was a huge relief for her mother – but she was completely surprised by what happened next.

"It sort of seemed like, well, they'll stabilize her, help her get back on her meds and she'll pick up her pieces. Instead, I went down to this emergency room and just found her by herself, basically locked in a closet," Partridge said. 

The "closet" was actually an exam room, but Partridge explains it was small, windowless, and the only furniture was a stainless steel bed.  Her daughter waited there, wearing nothing but a hospital gown, without treatment or a decent meal for 24 hours.  Partridge was shocked to learn there was no place for her daughter to get treatment.  "There was not a single psychiatric bed to release her in in the entire state of Colorado," she says.

The entire story is here.

From an Ethics of Rationing to an Ethics of Waste Avoidance

By Howard Brody, MD, PhD
The New England Journal of Medicine
Originally published on May 24, 2012

Dr. Howard Brody

Bioethics has long approached cost containment under the heading of “allocation of scarce resources.”  Having thus named the nail, bioethics has whacked away at it with the theoretical hammer of distributive justice. But in the United States, ethical debate is now shifting from rationing to the avoidance of waste. This little-noticed shift has important policy implications.

 Whereas the “R word” is a proverbial third rail in politics, ethicists rush in where politicians fear to tread. The ethics of rationing begins with two considerations.  First, rationing occurs simply because resources are finite and someone must decide who gets what. Second, rationing is therefore inevitable; if we avoid explicit rationing, we will resort to implicit and perhaps unfair rationing methods.

The main ethical objection to rationing is that physicians owe an absolute duty of fidelity to each individual patient, regardless of cost. This objection fails, however, because when resources are exhausted, the patients who are deprived of care are real people and not statistics. Physicians collectively owe loyalty to those patients too. The ethical argument about rationing then shifts to the question of the fairest means for allocating scarce resources — whether through the use of a quasi-objective measure such as quality-adjusted life-years or through a procedural approach such as increased democratic engagement of the community.

The entire story is here.

An interview with Dr. Brody is here.

Thanks to Gary Schoener for this lead.