Quality Care,

1. You have worked a long, busy Friday as a health care administrator at
the headquarters of Quality Care, Inc., an integrated health system,
based in Fairfax, Virginia. Fifteen minutes before you plan to leave
for home, you receive an urgent text from the office manager at a
Quality Care site in Annapolis, Maryland. She just has received a
“visit” from federal agents who flash their badges and demand to see
“someone in charge” who will “give them access to all office computers
and hard copy files.” The chief agent produces a Subpoena Duces Tecum
(from the Eastern District of Virginia federal court) for your office’s
written and electronic documents. This law enforcement official says,
very confidently, “My team and I will wait as long as we have to so we
get what we want.”

You and the office manager agree that your days just got a bit longer!
This is the first federal “drive-by” that you have dealt with in your
career. What legal and policy concerns should you and other Quality
Care staff members address? Apply risk management concepts: what should
Quality Care do – and not do in this situation? Be specific in
providing guidance to Quality Care executives and the Maryland manager.

2. A physician group practice in the District of Columbia learns that
one of its most senior – and trusted – members – has a serious substance
abuse issue. This physician, like all other physicians in the group,
is an independent contractor who works at a major DC hospital. She
takes an approved medical leave of absence to get treatment for her
illness. Three months later, the physician writes to the practice
chair, advising him that she is ready to return to work. The practice’s
chair does not know whether to inform the hospital that his colleague
missed three months of work – and to disclose why she was absent.

Discuss the potential legal theories of liability that the physician
group and hospital each might encounter in this situation. To whom, if
anyone, would the group and hospital owe a legal duty? Provide at least
two recommendations each to the doctors and to hospital officials.
Think of and communicate the “big picture” just as you had to do in your
case study responses.
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