Due Diligence and Legal Obligations of Employment Screening in Healthcare Organizations

Few career fields are as dynamic as healthcare. Even non-clinical employees and volunteer staff may encounter risks or assume responsibilities unforeseeable in other career fields. Clinical workers in particular must respond to life and death workplace challenges with competence and compassion. Employee reliability is the single most important health system input. Reliability begins with thorough employment background screening. As they minimize risks from “bad hires,” background investigations must also comply with federal, state, and local laws as well as industry standards and best practices. Although predicting the likelihood of future malfeasance by any single employee is impossible, effective backgrounding enhances quality of care, decreases risks, and lowers costs. Managing the vetting process with competence requires a solid working knowledge of all lawful steps needed to ensure full, due-diligence compliant background investigations. If a screening process is transparent and impartial with fair group outcomes, due diligence is satisfied

Medical Volunteers During Pandemics, Disasters, and Other Emergencies: Management Best Practices

How best to utilize volunteers[1] during medical emergencies is an essential part of hospital compliance planning. Onboarding recruited and spontaneous volunteers during crisis situations require careful consideration of multiple legal issues. Volunteer planning becomes more complex if volunteers move across state lines because applicable tort immunity statutes,[2] compensation limits,[3]and workers compensation regimes vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another. Effective planning for volunteers requires these and other issues to be addressed well in advance of actual emergencies. Although predicting the scope or severity of any future crisis is impossible, the provided checklist of management best practices should facilitate enhanced care, decreased risk, and lowered costs. [1] Mark A. Hager & Jeffrey L. Brudney, Balancing Act: The Challenges and Benefits of Volunteers, The Urban Inst. (Dec. 2004), https://www.nationalservice.gov/pdf/Balancing_Act.pdf [https://perma.cc/A6M8-DM53]. [2] In Virginia, nonprofits are immune from suits by beneficiaries alleging negligence absent a finding of corporate negligence or failure to exercise ordinary care in the selection of employees or volunteers. Va. Code Ann. § 44-146.23 (2009). Wyoming limits charitable immunity only if a nonprofit provides services without charge Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 1-1-125 (2017). [3] Colorado limits judgments against non-profits to the extent of existing insurance coverage. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 7-123-105 (2004). Massachusetts has a cap of $20,000 for torts committed while engaged in acts to directly accomplish the charitable purposes of the organization. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 231, § 85K (2012). South Carolina limits awards to$250,000 in actions for injury or death caused by the tort of an agent, servant, employee, or officer of charitable organizations. S.C. Code Ann. § 33-56-180 (2000). Texas operational tort liability is $500,000 per person and$1,000,000 per event but does not extend to hospitals. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. § 84.006 (1987)

The Photoeccentric Effect and Proto-Hot Jupiters I. Measuring photometric eccentricities of individual transiting planets

Exoplanet orbital eccentricities offer valuable clues about the history of planetary systems. Eccentric, Jupiter-sized planets are particularly interesting: they may link the "cold" Jupiters beyond the ice line to close-in hot Jupiters, which are unlikely to have formed in situ. To date, eccentricities of individual transiting planets primarily come from radial velocity measurements. Kepler has discovered hundreds of transiting Jupiters spanning a range of periods, but the faintness of the host stars precludes radial velocity follow-up of most. Here we demonstrate a Bayesian method of measuring an individual planet's eccentricity solely from its transit light curve using prior knowledge of its host star's density. We show that eccentric Jupiters are readily identified by their short ingress/egress/total transit durations -- part of the "photoeccentric" light curve signature of a planet's eccentricity --- even with long-cadence Kepler photometry and loosely-constrained stellar parameters. A Markov Chain Monte Carlo exploration of parameter posteriors naturally marginalizes over the periapse angle and automatically accounts for the transit probability. To demonstrate, we use three published transit light curves of HD 17156 b to measure an eccentricity of e = 0.71 +0.16/-0.09, in good agreement with the discovery value e = 0.67+/-0.08 based on 33 radial-velocity measurements. We present two additional tests using actual Kepler data. In each case the technique proves to be a viable method of measuring exoplanet eccentricities and their confidence intervals. Finally, we argue that this method is the most efficient, effective means of identifying the extremely eccentric, proto hot Jupiters predicted by Socrates et al. (2012).Comment: ApJ, 756, 122. Received 2012 April 5; accepted 2012 July 9; published 2012 August 2

HAT-P-30b: A TRANSITING HOT JUPITER ON A HIGHLY OBLIQUE ORBIT

We report the discovery of HAT-P-30b, a transiting exoplanet orbiting the V = 10.419 dwarf star GSC 0208-00722. The planet has a period P = 2.810595 [plus-minus] 0.000005 days, transit epoch T[subscript c] = 2455456.46561 [plus-minus] 0.00037 (BJD), and transit duration 0.0887 [plus-minus] 0.0015 days. The host star has a mass of 1.24 ± 0.04 M ⊙, radius of 1.21 [plus-minus] 0.05 R ⊙, effective temperature of 6304 [plus-minus] 88 K, and metallicity [Fe/H] = +0.13 [plus-minus] 0.08. The planetary companion has a mass of 0.711 [plus-minus] 0.028 M[subscript J] and radius of 1.340 [plus-minus] 0.065 R[subscript J] yielding a mean density of 0.37 [plus-minus] 0.05 g cm[superscript –3]. We also present radial velocity measurements that were obtained throughout a transit that exhibit the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. By modeling this effect, we measure an angle of λ = 73fdg5 [plus-minus] 9fdg0 between the sky projections of the planet's orbit normal and the star's spin axis. HAT-P-30b represents another example of a close-in planet on a highly tilted orbit, and conforms to the previously noted pattern that tilted orbits are more common around stars with T[subscript eff*] gsim 6250 K.United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA grant NNX09AF59G)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Kepler Mission under NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC2-1390)Hungarian Scientific Research Foundation (grant K-81373

Refined physical properties of the HAT-P-13 planetary system

We present photometry of four transits of the planetary system HAT-P-13, obtained using defocussed telescopes. We analyse these, plus nine datasets from the literature, in order to determine the physical properties of the system. The mass and radius of the star are M_A = 1.320 +/- 0.048 +/- 0.039 Msun and R_A = 1.756 +/- 0.043 +/- 0.017 Rsun (statistical and systematic errorbars). We find the equivalent quantities for the transiting planet to be M_b = 0.906 +/- 0.024 +/- 0.018 Mjup and R_b = 1.487 +/- 0.038 +/- 0.015 Rjup, with an equilibrium temperature of 1725 +/- 31 K. Compared to previous results, which were based on much sparser photometric data, we find the star to be more massive and evolved, and the planet to be larger, hotter and more rarefied. The properties of the planet are not matched by standard models of irradiated gas giants. Its large radius anomaly is in line with the observation that the hottest planets are the most inflated, but at odds with the suggestion of inverse proportionality to the [Fe/H] of the parent star. We assemble all available times of transit midpoint and determine a new linear ephemeris. Previous findings of transit timing variations in the HAT-P-13 system are shown to disagree with these measurements, and can be attributed to small-number statistics.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 8 pages, 5 tables, 3 figures. The results have been included in the TEPCat catalogue of transiting planets at http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/~jkt/tepcat

Retired A Stars and Their Companions VI. A Pair of Interacting Exoplanet Pairs Around the Subgiants 24 Sextanis and HD200964

We report radial velocity measurements of the G-type subgiants 24 Sextanis (=HD90043) and HD200964. Both are massive, evolved stars that exhibit periodic variations due to the presence of a pair of Jovian planets. Photometric monitoring with the T12 0.80m APT at Fairborn Observatory demonstrates both stars to be constant in brightness to <= 0.002 mag, thus strengthening the planetary interpretation of the radial velocity variations. 24 Sex b,c have orbital periods of 453.8 days and 883~days, corresponding to semimajor axes 1.333 AU and 2.08 AU, and minimum masses (Msini) 1.99 Mjup and 0.86 Mjup, assuming a stellar mass 1.54 Msun. HD200964 b,c have orbital periods of 613.8 days and 825 days, corresponding to semimajor axes 1.601 AU and 1.95 AU, and minimum masses 1.85 Mjup and 0.90 Mjup, assuming M* = 1.44 Msun. We also carry out dynamical simulations to properly account for gravitational interactions between the planets. Most, if not all, of the dynamically stable solutions include crossing orbits, suggesting that each system is locked in a mean motion resonance that prevents close encounters and provides long-term stability. The planets in the 24 Sex system likely have a period ratio near 2:1, while the HD200964 system is even more tightly packed with a period ratio close to 4:3. However, we caution that further radial velocity observations and more detailed dynamical modelling will be required to provide definitive and unique orbital solutions for both cases, and to determine whether the two systems are truly resonant.Comment: AJ accepte

Retired A Stars and Their Companions. III. Comparing the Mass-Period Distributions of Planets Around A-Type Stars and Sun-Like Stars

We present an analysis of ~5 years of Lick Observatory radial velocity measurements targeting a uniform sample of 31 intermediate-mass subgiants (1.5 < M*/Msun < 2.0) with the goal of measuring the occurrence rate of Jovian planets around (evolved) A-type stars and comparing the distributions of their orbital and physical characteristics to those of planets around Sun-like stars. We provide updated orbital solutions incorporating new radial velocity measurements for five known planet-hosting stars in our sample; uncertainties in the fitted parameters are assessed using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. The frequency of Jovian planets interior to 3 AU is 26 (+9,-8)%, which is significantly higher than the ~5-10% frequency observed around solar-mass stars. The median detection threshold for our sample includes minimum masses down to {0.2, 0.3, 0.5, 0.6, 1.3} MJup within {0.1, 0.3, 0.6, 1.0, 3.0} AU. To compare the properties of planets around intermediate-mass stars to those around solar-mass stars we synthesize a population of planets based on the parametric relationship dN ~ M^{alpha}P^{beta} dlnM dlnP, the observed planet frequency, and the detection limits we derived. We find that the values of alpha and beta for planets around solar-type stars from Cumming et al. fail to reproduce the observed properties of planets in our sample at the 4 sigma level, even when accounting for the different planet occurrence rates. Thus, the properties of planets around A stars are markedly different than those around Sun-like stars, suggesting that only a small (~ 50%) increase in stellar mass has a large influence on the formation and orbital evolution of planets.Comment: Accepted by the Astrophysical Journal; 15 pages, 15 figure

The PASCAL Visual Object Classes Challenge: A Retrospective

Everingham M., Eslami S.M.A, Van Gool L., Williams C.K.I., Winn J., Zisserman A., ''The PASCAL visual object classes challenge: A retrospective'', International journal of computer vision, vol. 111, no. 1, pp. 98-136, January 2015.status: publishe