Use of registry employees can pose legal problems

In view of the potential legal liability to which a recipient entity can be exposed when using registry employees, some care must be taken in drafting registry contract services and in modulating the recipient entity's behavior towards the registry personnel. The following steps should generally be taken by health care establishments purchasing registry services to minimize such exposure: (1) Ensure that the registry treats its personnel as employees and complies with all applicable employment law obligations, including state and federal employment tax requirements, workers' compensation laws, and any state law wage and hour requirements in the recipient's state. (2) If using an out-of-state registry, make sure that the registry also has workers' compensation insurance in the recipient's state and complies with that state workers' compensation laws. (3) Make sure that termination decisions regarding registry employees are not made for reasons that violate any federal anti-discrimination laws. (4) Provide in the registry agreement for full indemnification by the registry to the recipient. (5) Ensure that the registry is solvent and has adequate insurance to honor its indemnification obligation. (6) Obtain a warranty from the registry that it carefully screens all of its employees before hiring them. (7) Expressly state in the registry agreement that the registry has the right to discipline and supervise the personnel it refers. (8) Do not reject registry personnel for reasons that would be improper with respect to the facility's own employees, e.g., race, sex, age, religion, disability, etc.     

Genetic testing,genetic medicine,and managed care

As modern human genetics moves from the research setting to the clinical setting, it will encounter the managed care system. Issues of cost, access, and quality of care will affect the availability and nature of genetic testing, genetic counseling, and genetic therapies. This Article will explore such issues as professional education, coverage of genetic services, privacy and confidentiality, and liability. It will conclude with a series of recommendations for the practice of genetic medicine in the age of managed care.     

Laryngeal basement membrane thickening is not a reliable postmortem marker for SIDS: results from the Chicago Infant Mortality Study.

It has been suggested that laryngeal basement membrane (LBM) thickening is a pathognomonic postmortem marker for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and is not seen in other causes of explained sudden infant death. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated longitudinal sections of the right hemilarynx taken through the midpoint of the true vocal cord from 129 SIDS cases and 77 postneonatal sudden infant death controls. Using a five-point semi-quantitative scale, maximum LBM thickness (LBMT) for SIDS cases and controls was not statistically different (mean, 2.39 + 0.69 and 2.40 + 0.77, respectively). Likewise, scores based on the average thickness along the entire basement membrane (i.e., "average" score), were not found to be different between SIDS cases and controls. Average and maximum LBMT increased with age in both SIDS cases and controls and were not different between SIDS cases and controls within each age interval. Similar trends in the distribution of maximum and average LBMTs were found between black and Hispanic SIDS and controls; the number of white/non-Hispanic infants was too low for meaningful comparisons. Maximum and average LBMTs were not different in SIDS cases and controls exposed to environmental tobacco compared with unexposed infants. The LBMTs also increased significantly with body weight and length in both SIDS cases and controls. Finally, there were no differences in LBMT in infants intubated prior to death compared with those who were not intubated. From these data, we conclude that LBMT is not pathognomonic of SIDS, is present or absent with equal frequency in SIDS and controls, increases with postnatal age, and does not correlate with passive smoke exposure. Therefore, LBMT should not be used to diagnose SIDS.     

Winning by Co-Opeting in Strategic Government-University-Industry R&D Partnerships: The Power of Complex, Dynamic Knowledge Networks

There is increasing consensus among academic scholars, policy makers, and industry practitioners alike that the present and future secret of business survival and prosperity lies in strategic partnering and co-opeting successfully rather than outright competition. This is particularly so in knowledge-intensive, highly complex, and dynamic environments such as all high technology industries (semiconductors, aerospace, software, telecommunications, etc.), where collaborating to compete in knowledge generation and exchange has become so pervasive it is often hard to notice having become the standard modus operandi (from cross-licensing agreements to strategic complementarity in products and services). For example, witness the case of the Microsoft/Intel collaboration or “Wintel” alliance. We propose a dynamic, learning-driven framework which uses the game theoretic perspective, drawing principally from the notion of “co-opetition” (coined by Ray Noorda, former CEO of Novell, and developed by Brandenburger and Nalebuff [1996]), to examine how a knowledge generating and leveraging value-maximizing organization (not just a for-profit firm), should position itself in relation to the range of players with whom the organization interacts (in terms of market relationships, generating and pooling of strategic knowledge assets including intellectual property rights and human capital, and other dimensions) to maximize shareholder value in the long term. Select case studies focusing on government-university-industry strategic partnerships for research and technological development (GUISP RTDs), such as the NSF Engineering Research Centers, provide empirical validation of our concepts and especially on how to architect intelligent organizational interfaces across the spectrum of strategic R&D collaborations.     

From Chaos To Patterns Of Understanding: Reflections On The Dynamics Of Effective Government Decision Making

Like other liberal-democratic governments, Australia has been going through a process of dramatic change in political and administrative structures and processes. There has been the well-documented shift from controlling inputs to managing for results which has resulted in the desired enhancement of executive government's responsibility and accountability for outcomes. A clear understanding of the evolving process of cabinet decision making points the way ahead to the next phase of reform. What lies ahead could, indeed, be more revolutionary than what has been achieved to date. Weber's dynamic concept of authority and domination, when understood as Weber himself used it, can tell one much about change and future possible evolution. It helps, heuristically, to indicate that government decision-making processes have already evolved to a sophisticated level. However, there is still much development that should be undertaken to maintain the quality of decision making. For instance, the move to small policy-advising departments and separated administrative programme-delivery agencies could be seen as a natural evolution and quite predictable. Good governance relies much on attaining a balance, in Weber's terms, between the ethics of intention (means) and the ethics of responsibility (ends). Together, they make the 'true man' who can have a 'vocation of politics' says Weber – but the 'true man' is hard to find. What is needed, therefore, are decision-making processes that are good at drawing out this balance. Well-established patterns of social action, encapsulated in Weber's sociology and typographically oriented hermeneutics, can help identify how this could be achieved. For instance, when one understands Weber's ideal types of authority structure as the core of a comprehensive conceptual model with constant interplay and movement over time, one can get a hint of how government decision making could be further enhanced.     

Reviews

Big Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana: Power, Ideology and the Burden of History, 1982–1994 by Paul Nugent. Pinter Publishing Limited (London and New York). 1995. xiv plus 306pp. including bibliography and index. £35 or $63 hardback.

Understanding Contemporary Africa (2nd edition) edited by April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder and London. 1996. xiv plus 432pp. including maps, illustrations, notes, bibliographies, appendices and index.

The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises in a World of Power edited by Edwin N. Wilmsen and Patrick McAllister. University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. 1996. ix plus 210pp.

The Multilateral Development Banks. Volume 1. The African Development Bank by E. Philip English and Harris M. Mule. The North‐South Institute. Ottawa. 1996. xvi plus 213pp.

Brothers at War: Dissidence and Rebellion in Southern Africa by Abiodun Alao. British Academic Press, London and New York. 1994. xiii plus 201pp. including notes, bibliography, index. £39.50. Hardback.

Now that We are Free: Coloured Communities in Democratic South Africa edited by Wilmot James, Daria Caliguire and Kerry Cullinan. Lynne Rienner Publishing, Boulder (Colorado) and London. 1996. 142pp.

Imperialism or Solidarity? International Labour and South African Trade Unions by Roger Southall. University of Cape Town Press, Cape Town. 1995. 398pp.

The Aid Relationship in Zambia: A Conflict Scenario by Oliver Saasa and Jerker Carlsson. Institute for African Studies, Lusaka (Zambia) and Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala (Sweden). 1996. 170pp. including figures, tables, notes, bibliography and index. Paperback.     

“Truncated” society: The eastern European cases

The multicultural experience of the author inspires a reflection on the persistence of certain negative features in several societies despite profound transformations not only outside and even also inside them. In the post-communist reality of eastern Europe, the national reconstruction meets obstacles originating not only from the rigid nature of the Soviet style state socialism and the one party rule, but also from the pre-communist heritage. The inability to deal with the past and take a constructive approach to the present and to the future is behind the phenomenon of truncation, preventing the given society to enter the road of a substantial reconstruction in the conditions of free market economy of the Western style democracy.     

Salient factor score and releasee behavior: Three validation samples

This paper provides an opportunity to observe the application of an actuarial device, used by the United States Parole Commission as an aid in parole selection, to three separate validation samples—each exceeding 1000 cases. Follow-up data for this study were provided through the cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition, evidence is presented which may shed light on the conflict in the literature regarding whether or not the rate of unfavorable outcome of released prisoners at risk actually declines substantially after the first year (i.e., whether or not the first year after release is really the most critical).Adapted from Report Fifteen, United States Parole Commission Research Unit, August 1977.