state laws

Over the course of a two-week period in late March and early April, the rules for prescribing painkillers were tightened in Ohio, an improved drug-monitoring system was unveiled in Michigan, and nine bills to prevent opioid abuse won passage in the Wisconsin Assembly. The flurry of activity in those three states illustrates just how big the opioid problem continues to be in many parts of the Midwest, as well as how much of a priority legislative leaders have placed on finding new ways to address it.

Near the top of that priority list is better controlling how prescription drugs are dispensed, prescribed and used.

A few months before residents in one of their state’s largest cities were scheduled to vote on a proposed increase in the minimum wage, Ohio lawmakers stepped in to block the ballot initiative. SB 331, signed into law in December, bans all Ohio political subdivisions from “establishing minimum wage rates different from the rate required by state law.”

The Supreme Court keeps on accepting First Amendment cases—perhaps because among the current Court there is much agreement on the First Amendment, so being down a Justice doesn’t matter. This does not bode well for state and local governments, like North Carolina in this case. For better or worse, this case like Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, accepted in September, gives the Supreme Court a chance to refine its holding in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona (2015).  

The issue in Packingham v. North Carolina is whether a North Carolina law prohibiting registered sex offenders from accessing commercial social networking websites where the registered sex offender knows minors can create or maintain a profile, violates the First Amendment.

For patients who develop sepsis, the ability of a health professional to recognize it early on can mean the difference between life and death, or between full recovery and permanent organ damage. For doctors and nurses, though, early recognition of this condition (caused by the human body’s response to an infection) can be difficult.

“The symptoms are like those for the flu and many other diseases,” says Kelly Court, chief quality officer at the Wisconsin Hospital Association. “So you need to get the entire clinical team at a hospital to think sepsis when evaluating a patient, because early detection is so important.”

Four years ago, that early detection did not take place in a case that led to the tragic death of a 5-year-old girl in Illinois. The girl, Gabby Galbo, died from sepsis after a tick bite caused a bacterial infection.

Gabby’s Law (SB 2403), signed into law this summer after receiving unanimous legislative approval, puts in place new statewide requirements for hospitals, which will now have to establish and then periodically implement evidence-based sepsis protocols — for example, a process for screening and early recognition, identification of the infectious source, and guidelines for how to administer fluids and deliver antibiotics to patients. Direct-care staff in Illinois’ hospitals will have to receive periodic training on these protocols.