Tag Archive for: Mary Holloway Richard

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Mary Holloway Richard sourced in article investigating hospital merger

Mary Holloway Richard, leader of the Firm’s Health Care Practice, was quoted in a Journal Record article by Sarah Terry-Cobo regarding an attempted merger by OU Medical System and how best to financially achieve that mission.

Read Richard’s comments from the article below:

OKLAHOMA CITY – When it comes to complicated relationships, sometimes it just takes the right partner. After a failed hospital merger was announced Monday, OU Medical System could still find its better half.

But making that match probably won’t be easy, said industry observers. Health care attorney Mary Holloway Richard said a potential partner needs the business expertise as well as the financial backing to purchase a large teaching hospital.

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Richard said teaching hospitals have historically had higher costs than non-academic hospitals.

A potential partner has to evaluate the economic feasibility, regardless of whether parties are considering an outright acquisition or a joint venture, she said.

“Will it fit in with your overall business model?” Richard said. “(A teaching hospital) is a complex system, so how you incorporate that complex system into an existing system requires mastery of both the business model and the financial feasibility, as well as recognition of the compliance issues at play.”

Read the full article at the Journal Record.

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Therapists need liability protection

By Mary Holloway Richard

This column was originally published in The Journal Record on January 18, 2017.

Behavioral health is a unique subset of health care law. I long have been privileged to see firsthand the challenges in working as a therapist while successfully avoiding liability and regulatory land mines, and I am empathetic with patients and families.

I believe it is important to provide protection from liability for therapists and to eschew expansion to predicting dangerousness of patients as the standard of care to which they are held. Therapists must adhere to standards of care that, when breached, result in liability to a patient for harm caused by that breach. Forty years ago the therapist’s burden was expanded to encompass a duty to warn third parties under certain circumstances in Tarasoff v. Regents of Univ. of California.

Recently the Washington Supreme Court decided Volk v. DeMeerleer, expanding liability of mental health professionals to unidentified individuals. As in Tarasoff, reactions among states can range from adopting to rejecting the rule in response. Such decisions are framed in reliance on laws in other states, scholarly articles and treatises, such as the creation of post-Tarasoff California statutory immunity for the therapist’s duty to warn third parties.

The Washington Supreme Court ruled in Volk that a psychiatrist could be liable for homicides even though the victims were not identified as targets of violence. The decision expands the scope of liability beyond the professional’s traditional duty to create a duty to identified third parties and may also result in expanding the rule from mental health professionals to other providers.

It is true that the Volk case concerned the murders of a young mother and her son as well as the suicide of the patient who killed them, and we are all too familiar with the facts of Columbine and Newtown. And society must protect these individuals. We must balance the need to protect our communities from violence with the need to protect our providers from the reprehensible burden of liability for predicting violent propensities.

The Washington Supreme Court stated that whether the patient’s violent actions were foreseeable should have been resolved by a jury and created instability concerning professional liability. It remains to be seen if this holding reflects a national trend of expanding the scope of liability for mental health and other health care professionals.

Mary Richard is a health care attorney and a member of the Behavioral Health Task Force of the American Health Lawyers Association.

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Attorneys present at PLICO Healthcare Summit

Mary Holloway Richard

Mary Holloway Richard, Renee M. Brown, and Candace Williams Lisle at the PLICO EXPLORE Healthcare Summit on August 11, 2016.

Attorneys Mary Holloway Richard and Candace Williams Lisle spoke on audits in the health care industry at the PLICO EXPLORE Healthcare Summit in Norman, OK on August 11.

They presented “Driving Success: Using Internal and Payor Audits to your Benefit” with Renee M. Brown, CMIS, ACS-EM, CHA and covered:

  • regulatory reviews
  • federal health care (Medicare) contractors and oversight
  • appeals
  • external audits
  • False Claims Act
  • Medicaid
  • compliance plans, and
  • commercial payors.

For more information about the PLICO EXPLORE Healthcare Summit, click here.

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Journal Record names three attorneys Woman of the Year

woty-web-logo-2016The Journal Record will honor Phillips Murrah directors Sally A. Hasenfratz, Dawn M. Rahme, and attorney Mary Holloway Richard as those named on the 2016 Fifty Making A Difference list.

Judge Jane P. Wiseman will be the keynote speaker at the 2016 Journal Record Woman of the Year gala set for Nov. 2 at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

The Fifty Making A Difference list spotlights female business and community leaders, and honorees are chosen from nominations received across the state.

For more information, visit the Journal Record’s website.

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NewsOK Q&A: Advance directives provide care guidance for end of life

From NewsOK / by Paula Burkes
Published: April 28, 2016
Click to see full story – Advance directives provide care guidance for end of life

Q: What should we know about decision-making in the future to care for ourselves?

A: The mechanism for providing guidance to your health care professionals and to your family at the end of your life is a legal document known as an “advance directive.” The process of completing your advance directive is an important one because it makes you think about yourself in various end-of-life situations. You are telling your providers, in advance, what you will allow them to do, to the extent possible.

Q: Is there a specific form for an advance directive in Oklahoma?

A: Advance Directive forms are available at the Oklahoma Bar Association at www.okbar.org/Portals/14/PDF/Brochures/advance-directive-form.pdf. The advance directive statute requires that you must be 18 or older, of sound mind, and have two witnesses 18 or older and who aren’t beneficiaries of your will. The advance directive needn’t be notarized. It’s effective when your health state is such that your physician and another physician conclude that you no longer are able to make your own health care decisions.

Q: What kinds of provisions can I make for myself with an advance directive?

A: Advance directives provide treatment and care directions for three different conditions. You can provide directions to your providers when your condition is determined to be terminal. A terminal condition is one which, in your physician’s opinion, will result in your death within six months. You also can provide directions about your care when you’re persistently unconscious, which means that your condition is irreversible and you aren’t aware of your environment or of yourself. You also can provide your wishes for your care when you’re in an end-stage condition or an irreversible condition, and medical care would be ineffective. An advance directive also gives you the option of directing future artificially-administered food and water if you’re unable to take those by mouth in the three conditions described. You also can provide for organ donation in the advance directive.

Q: What else should I know about advance directives?

A: These decisions aren’t easy and it’s helpful if you involve your family in your decision-making so that they understand your wishes. Second, keep copies of your advance directives in a number of places and let your family members and loved ones know where they are so that guidance will be readily accessible when needed. Finally, under Oklahoma law, an advance directive for mental health also is available.

Q: Is there a specific form for the advance directive for mental health?

A: The Oklahoma Advance Directive for Mental Health form is found in our Oklahoma statutes, Title 43A Section 11-106. This advance directive allows you to provide for an alternate decision-maker for your mental health treatment. For the seriously mentally ill, this is important in terms of facilitating care when needed, at moments of crises. The advance directive on mental health becomes effective if the attending physician or psychologist determines that the ability to receive and evaluate information and to communicate decisions is impaired so that one lacks the capacity to refuse or consent to mental health treatment. “Capacity” is a determination made by the health care provider.

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