Medical Records

Child protection workers did not prove that a Cape May County mother abused her infant even though the child tested positive for cocaine at birth, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision Wednesday. The decision overturned two lower-court decisions in the 2007 case. Drug tests alone do not substantiate abuse and protection workers must show actual or imminent harm, the justices wrote. The court also found that state child welfare laws do not apply to a fetus.

A South Philadelphia doctor, convicted on 18 of 19 counts relating to running a "pill mill" at his office at 7th and Morris Streets, was sentenced today to seven years in federal prison. Richard Minicozzi, 79, who lives in Elkins Park, sold prescriptions for oxycodone and distributed Vicodin and Xanax for cash to "patients" who had no legitimate need for the drugs, prosecutors said. Minicozzi's attorney, Jeff Miller, told the Inquirer that his client suffers from dementia and that wholesalers who sold him the drugs are guilty of profiting from the unusually high volumes Minicozzi ordered.

MANHEIM, Pa. - A central Pennsylvania man suffocated his 17-year-old girlfriend by sitting on her head after he intentionally drove into a guardrail at about 100 m.p.h. in the middle of the night, authorities said. Police filed homicide and other charges Friday against Benjamin Daniel Klinger, 19, for the Dec. 4 death of Sammi Heller on an interstate near Manheim. Klinger is accused of crashing on purpose, then killing Heller by sitting on her until she was asphyxiated. "At first glance, this appeared to be simply another tragic vehicle accident," Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman told the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal-New Era. "However, the police worked hand in hand with our forensic experts and saw this was far more complicated, sinister, and certainly criminal.

Electronic medical records are considered by many health-care experts an essential tool in eventually providing better and more cost-efficient health care for Americans, but the implementation process is still in its infancy and has teething pains, as explained in a government report released Thursday. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) have provided financial incentives for doctors and hospitals to implement effective electronic records. According to CMS records, 51 hospitals in Pennsylvania and 15 in New Jersey have received payments, as have 3,798 Pennsylvania doctors and 2,135 of their colleagues in New Jersey.

RUSHVILLE, Ill. - Patients line up early outside his office just off the town square, waiting quietly for the doctor to arrive, as he has done for nearly 60 years. Dr. Russell Dohner is, after all, a man of routine, a steady force to be counted on in uncertain times. His office has no fax machines or computers. Medical records are kept on handwritten index cards, stuffed into row upon row of filing cabinets. The only thing that has changed really - other than the quickness of the doctor's step or the color of his thinning hair - is his fee. When Dohner started practicing medicine in Rushville in 1955, he charged the going rate around town for an office visit: $2. Now, it is $5. This in an era when the cost of health care has steadily risen, when those who don't have medical insurance often forgo seeing a doctor.

A 57-year-old Gloucester County woman on Wednesday became the latest New Jersey resident diagnosed with possible fungal meningitis from a tainted steroid medication traced to a Framingham, Mass., pharmacy. The woman is recovering at South Jersey Healthcare Regional Medical Center in Vineland, the same place where she had the medication administered July 12, according to the state health department. An agency spokeswoman would not say where the woman lives. Seventeen probable cases of fungal meningitis and one confirmed case have been reported in the state, all in South Jersey.

MINNEAPOLIS - Some Minnesota lawmakers hope to force the release of Lou Gehrig's medical records, saying that they might provide insight into whether the Yankees star died of the disease that came to take his name or whether repetitive head trauma played some kind of role. Their effort comes despite opposition from Mayo Clinic, which holds the records, and skepticism from experts that the records alone would prove anything. Rep. Phyllis Kahn, a Minneapolis Democrat and self-described baseball fanatic, conceded that the records "probably won't show anything.

A succession of child-welfare professionals, including Department of Human Services social workers, a Family Court judge, city lawyers, and a doctor, all missed chances to rescue 6-year-old Khalil Wimes from the abusive parents who were charged with his murder in March, according to a state-mandated review of his death. Khalil was dead from head trauma, his emaciated corpse covered in scars, when his parents - Floyd Wimes, 48, and Tina Cuffie, 44 - took him to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on the night of March 19. An Inquirer review showed Khalil spent the final months of his life beaten, undernourished, desperately ill, and out of school, all while DHS failed to recognize a child in danger.

JERUSALEM - A former Israeli official on Wednesday denied suspicions that Israel poisoned Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, as France prepared to begin an investigation into his possible murder following a Swiss lab's claim that it found traces of a deadly substance on his belongings. Dov Weisglass, chief of staff to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the time of Arafat's death in 2004 and a key participant in deliberations surrounding Arafat's worsening health, said Israel had no reason to physically harm the Palestinian leader.