One good thing that occurred during the pandemic was the expansion of telehealth. Telehealth existed already and probably would have been expanding anyway, but patient willingness to get care from home instead of risking exposure from an in-person visit paired well with provider interest in not going to or even having to maintain an office.
Arbitration, if done right, is an effective, speedy, and low-cost alternative to civil litigation of all kinds, which is why the other side (or at least the lawyers representing them) hates it. Unfortunately, with prescription medical products − and their necessary learned intermediary physicians – arbitration doesn’t come up very often in our line of work, although nothing inherent in personal injury litigation precludes mandatory arbitration.
But it might happen more, in the future. In a think piece we published a couple of years ago, on software liability, we identified arbitration as one of the consequences in litigation where intermediaries (“learned” or otherwise) were out of the picture. “In direct-to-consumer contexts, providers routinely seek to use contracts such as click-wrap licenses to allocate software-related liability including limitations on liability, forum selection clauses, compulsory arbitration and similar protective measures.”
But our clients might, at least in certain situations, be able to enjoy both the learned intermediary rule as well as mandatory arbitration.Continue Reading Oye Cómo Va? To Arbitration.
This week my health care colleagues authored an industry trends report highlighting many of the major regulatory issues facing life sciences and health care companies in the coming year. The “Outlook: U.S. Health Care 2021” report includes sections on post-COVID trends and lessons learned, the future of value-based care, the intersection of health care and
Somebody asked Bexis the other day whether he thought that the increasing reliance on “telemedicine” – physician consultations taking place online, perhaps followed by the prescription of a drug or medical device – posed any risks to the learned intermediary rule.
Bexis said, “no.” Would you expect other answer?
That response was based largely on