The Health Lawyers Association recently released a checklist of legal issues that could arise during a pandemic influenza outbreak.
“Community Pan-Flu Preparedness: A Checklist of Key Legal Issues for Healthcare Providers” is designed to serve as a resource for health care providers, public health agencies and government officials. Released this summer, the guidebook addresses issues such as consent to treatment, isolation and quarantine, the ethics of scarce resources, and temporary licensing and credentialing of health care workers, among others.
American Health Lawyers Association President Elizabeth Belmont called the checklist a “scalable tool designed to assist providers along the continuum of care in taking concrete steps to prepare for an influenza pandemic.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collaborated with the lawyers association to develop the checklist. CDC Director Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, said the document “is a fantastic tool for initiating a dialogue between health care attorneys and their organizations on the legal, ethical and practical issues that health care providers will face during a pandemic.”
Those issues could include quarantine in the workplace, altered standards of care in surge facilities, communication logistics, privacy and security of protected health information, and ensuring people with chronic medical conditions receive needed treatment during a public health emergency. The checklist also discusses how to comply with the requirements of laws such as the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act during a pandemic.
The full legal checklist is available online at www.healthlawyers.org/panfluchecklist.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
In this issue
