President Biden's Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence-Implications for Health Care Organizations.

This Viewpoint discusses a recent executive order by US President Joe Biden about the development and implementation of AI, including the role of government vs the private sector and how the order may affect health care.

Using patient safety organizations to further clinical integration.

This article addresses why in the current context of driving toward improved value, physician groups ought to consider developing a patient safety evaluation system and reporting to a patient safety organization. The fundamental challenge to physicians to succeed in the future is to clinically integrate within their own practices, standardizing to the evidence base, and measuring their performance. In addition, it is increasingly clear that the physician office practice is a source of patient safety issues. The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act provides two powerful protections for data that will support and bolster clinical integration and patient safety. The protections and how to deploy them are presented.

Physician M&As: what you need to know before taking the plunge.

In the current healthcare environment, many physicians are considering merging practices. Increasing costs, decreasing revenues, and changing regulations are obstacles today's physicians face, which has led many to "take the plunge" and merge practices. For a successful merger to occur, many factors must be considered. Advantages and disadvantages exist that must be weighed in order to determine if a merger is the best decision. This article considers the factors associated with merging physician practices to determine the best possible outcome for a physician's practice.

Holy headache. Accommodating employees' religious beliefs and practices.

How much accommodation does your practice have to make for employees' religious beliefs? Recent court decisions offer guidance.

Changes to patient limitation for dispensing or prescribing approved narcotic controlled substances for maintenance or detoxification treatment by qualified individual practitioners. Final rule.

On September 20, 2007, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register (72 FR 53734) proposing to conform its regulations to recent statutory amendments to the Controlled Substances Act that changed certain patient limitations for practitioners who dispense or prescribe certain narcotic drugs for maintenance or detoxification treatment. DEA received one comment in support of this rulemaking. DEA is finalizing the rule as proposed.

Common Legal Considerations When Moving to a New Medical Practice.

This article presents a hypothetical case of the legal issues a physician must consider when moving to a new medical practice, such as the enforceability of a noncompete clause, malpractice insurance, communicating this change in practice to existing patients, and custody of medical records.