Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Mississippi: Docs contacting their patients traveling there take a risk

I inquired of the MS medical board as to policy regarding tele contact with patients traveling there from their physician in their home state who is not licensed in MS:

Email from Frances Carrillo at the Mississippi medical Board, responding to my inquiry: “I will forward to the Board attorney on Monday. You have not received a response by the end of next week send me an email.” No attorney contacted me, and Ms. Carrillo did not respond to a follow up email. When I called the board the receptionist would only send me to Ms. Carrillo’s voice mail. It appears that out of state physicians contacting their patients traveling in Mississippi do so at their own risk.

4 comments:

  1. ...What could they possibly do to you? If you don't live in Mississipi, I wouldn't think they would pursue actually trying to prosecute you if you are in a totally different state. At least not for something like that. I could see them maybe sending you something in the mail (cease and desist sort of thing) but I can't imagine them taking it much further than that.

    My Dad was in the Viet Nam war. But the day before he shipped out, he was in a car accident in some other state. Whole car got destroyed. It's amazing he wasn't injured or killed. Can't remember the story exactly. I think there was a drunk driver and somehow the car he was in spun off the road and hit a telephone pole. The police showed up, but my Dad and his friends explained they were shipping out the next day so somehow they were able to get out of there and off to Nam...

    Flash to Viet Nam. My Dad recieves a letter in the mail demanding that he pay for the damage to the pole. He went to his commanding officer and asked him what he should do about it. The commanding officer told him to ignore it and never go back to that state.

    Also, my Dad owned a hippy mobile when he was in boot camp. Some officer was SUPER pissed off about it. It was parked at the base, and it had peace signs, and doves, and spray painted all kinds of crazy colors. So the officer had the car towed and taken to some impound lot at the base. So my Dad and his friend broke into the impound lot (somehow) and stole back the car. My Dad's friend promised to take the car and store it there for my Dad. Well, that officer was really pissed. He knew my Dad stole the car, so they ended up in front of some head military honcho and my Dad was asked over and over again to confess where he put the car. He didn't lie...he said he had no clue where the car was. He didn't know where his friend lived, so it wasn't a lie! And you know what happened? Nothing. The military could care less that he broke into the base impound lot and stole back his OWN car. Nobody would do anything to punish my Dad or investigate further, so the officer that had the car towed had to just live with it.

    Anyhow, just sayin'...whether it is local police or military police, I think they usually don't kick up much of a fuss over minor stuff

    I mean really...my Dad destroyed a pole with his car and also stole back his own car after a senior officer had it impounded. So that's destruction of public property, trespassing on the impound lot, and grand theft auto...And yet he never faced any consequences for any of that...

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  2. I can't explain what didn't happen to your dad Jane, but the climate for doctors who use the Internet is pretty hostile today. I wrote more about this in earlier posts, but my real point is that Skype should be treated the same as a phone call, as I discovered today is the policy in Louisiana.

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  3. If you ever get into trouble for contacting a patient in Mississippi over Skype you should tell them, "Only God can judge me." Ask them what they will tell God on Judgment Day if a patient has a meltdown and they try to interfere with a doc trying to help his patient cuz the patient was in Mississippi. It is the Bible Belt isn't it?

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