science

Health law

Health law is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Health law rather than just read about it. In short: Health law is a field of law that encompasses federal, state, and local law, rules, regulations and other jurisprudence among providers, payers and vendors to the health care industry and its patients, and delivery of health care services, with an emphasis on operations, regulatory and transactional issues. Terminology The Florida Bar defines "health law" as "legal issues involving federal, state, or local law, rule…

Key takeaways

Health law belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Health law to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Health law from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Health law is a field of law that encompasses federal, state, and local law, rules, regulations and other jurisprudence among providers, payers and vendors to the health care industry and its patients, and delivery of health care services, with an emphasis on operations, regulatory and transactional issues.

Terminology The Florida Bar defines "health law" as "legal issues involving federal, state, or local law, rules or regulations and health care provider issues, regulation of providers, legal issues regarding relationships between and among providers, legal issues regarding relationships between providers and payers, and legal issues regarding the delivery of health care services." American University's college of law, in health law and policy, divides health law into 4 areas: health care law (focused on treatment), public and population health law (focused on prevention), bioethics, and global health law. The terms "legislation" and "law" are used to refer generically to statutes, regulation and other legal instruments (e.g. ministerial decrees) that may be the forms of law used in a particular country. In general, there are a wide range of regulatory strategies that may be used to ensure people's health and safety. Increasingly, regulators are taking an approach of "responsive regulation". This involves using mechanisms that are responsive to the context, conduct, and culture of those being regulated, providing for a range of regulatory mechanisms to achieve the behavior desired. Where appropriate, the aim is to use incentives before sanctions. However, when those being regulated do not respond accordingly, escalating sanctions can be invoked. These strategies may be broadly classified into five groups:

voluntarism: voluntary compliance undertaken by an individual organization without any coercion; self-regulation: for example, an unorganized group that regulates the behavior of its members through a voluntary code of practice; economic instruments: for example, supply funding sanctions or incentives for health care providers, and/or demand-side measures that give more power to consumers; meta-regulation: involving an external regulatory body to ensure that health care providers implement safety and quality practices and programs; command and control mechanisms: involving enforcement by government

Legal practice Areas of law that may fall under the umbrella of health law include:

Contract law Medical malpractice Medical law Administrative law Public health law Consent In the United States, medicine and the law are interconnected. The law intervenes to regulate the duty to treat, which essentially is ruled by contract law. Doctors have the right to refuse treatment, in the absence of an emergency, when no previous doctor-patient relationship existed. However, according to EMTALA, doctors cannot discriminate because of disability, abandon a patient, or refuse their services in an emergency.

Board certification Health law was first adopted as a separate legal specialty by The Florida Bar's Board of Legal Specialization in 1995. Attorneys could become board-certified in health law and could hold themselves out as a "legal specialist" or "legal expert." In 2002, Texas adopted a similar program.

Education Attorneys may obtain additional education in the practice of health law via postgraduate Master of Laws (LL.M.) programs available in some law schools. The LL.M. demonstrates a higher level of course work and study than the basic law degree (J.D. or B.S.L.). Some law schools with graduate law programs offer a general LL.M. with course emphasis on health law, global health law, public health law, forensic medicine, or similar studies.

Malpractice Medical malpractice is also an area where law and medicine are interconnected, which relates to the standard of care, where custom similar locality rule may apply. There may be different schools of thought, where reputability is the issue at hand and alternative theories that can be based on the hand formula. There are other aspects of importance within the area of medical malpractice, such as causation, where medical probability and loss of chance are present. Damages, where the value of life and tort reforms appear to differ, and affirmative defenses, within the doctrine of informed consent, where waivers cannot suffice. There are rules such as the discovery rule that states that the statute of limitations starts to run when the injury has been discovered and not when it took place.

See also Bioethics Global health law Health policy Health promotion Health system Medical Law Drug policy Public health Regulation of therapeutic goods World Association for Medical Law Universal health care

References

Further reading European Journal of Health Law, ISSN 1571-8093 (electronic) ISSN 0929-0273 (Paper), Springer Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, ISSN 1527-1927 (electronic) ISSN 0361-6878 (paper), Duke University Press

External links Media related to Health law at Wikimedia Commons

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Health law

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Health law claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Health law before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Health law ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Health law

In research: Health law appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Health law in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Health law is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Global health, Health economics, Health education, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Health law outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Health law in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Health law means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Health law out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Health law in simple terms?

Why does Health law matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Health law?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Health law.