Category: Risk

  Health law is a discipline that focuses on the legal issues in health care, on representing the interests of recipients of health services or health care providers or the health sector and its businesses and goods and service providers, or government and its policy makers. What I love about health law is that the… Read more »

I am often asked by health leaders what to do when police arrive and need information about patients. Police officers and police departments are important community partners for health care organizations. As citizens, we all rely on the police to protect us and enforce the laws.  It is vital to the success of all health… Read more »

The Forward Email function should be used very carefully. Here’s why … As a lawyer, I get forwarded a lot of emails by my clients.  In those emails there are often long threads of internal email conversations within the team where they realize there is a legal question and I get retained to advise on an… Read more »

By Maria McDonald, McDonald HR Law You ask your lawyer to draft your health organization’s employment contract or termination release language because you want it done right. You want to limit your exposure for termination pay in an employment contract You want to ensure the termination release prevents the employee from raising any more legal… Read more »

By Steven Stechley, McGill Global Health Scholar You know what kindness is… but what is lateral kindness? Lateral kindness is a term originating from the west coast that refers to non-hierarchical kindness within Indigenous communities. It is a concept that draws on Indigenous values which promote and celebrate positive things that take place within the… Read more »

Ok. I wasn’t really undercover.  But I was a patient. I spent five days in hospital last week for a surgical procedure. I’m sore and hobbling around now.   While I was in hospital – I learned a lot about being a patient. In my normal day to day life, I give legal advice to health care organizations. I write… Read more »

Last Friday, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario released two new health privacy decisions. Decision 68 reads like a made for tv movie. It’s a doozy.  Hold on to your socks. The facts are complicated. I’ll try to simplify the back story. Back Story A patient complained that her former spouse (a physician) was… Read more »

Every health care organization receives complaints. A complaint is any negative feedback received from a patient or family member of a patient about your services. Health care is a complicated service industry and no matter how great the services you deliver are or the quality of your team members, there will always be gaps in… Read more »

Health care organizations of all shapes and sizes deal with volatile situations involving patients (or clients or residents) and family members or caregivers. Remember this case from last year of the woman at a health clinic who was yelling racist comments about wanting to see a “white doctor” and getting increasingly angry that only “brown doctors with… Read more »

I’ve delivered five team privacy training sessions for health care groups this month all over the province. One thing that has everyone talking is the new requirement to track privacy breaches and report the statistics to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario in 2019. Here are some tools and tips to help you better… Read more »