Food and Drug Administration
Legal Issues in Healthcare
University of Phoenix
Health care regulatory agencies supervise professional of the health care profession such as physicians, hospitals, and labs. Providing information in regards to changes in health care along with ensuring the safety and legal compliance and the quality of services provided to the public is the duty assigned to the agency. These agencies can range from the federal, all the way to the local level with the task of establishing rules and regulations for the health care industry to follow. The supervision of these is imperative. Fields of expertise range from disease control, health care providers, to food and drug. These different agencies are all housed under the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is the agency that will be analyzed in this paper. The FDA or Food and Drug administration is the oldest agency in the federal government of the U.S. This scientific, regulatory, and public health agency supervises items in the market that account for one fourth of every dollar spent by consumers. Earlier duties involved doing chemical analysis of farming products back in 1862 when it was known as the Department of Agriculture. In 1930 this department was renamed to the name that the public recognizes presently. The governing role started with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, this law banned interstate trading in contaminated and incorrectly labeled food and drugs. The enforcement of this law was headed by Chief Chemist Harvey Washington Wiley. As of today, the agency now employs over 10,000 that is made up of pharmacists, physicians, veterinarians, lawyers, microbiologists, chemists and pharmacologists. These were the starting blocks of consumer protection that would later evolve in to the regulatory laws that we presently abide by. The responsibilities over the years have been modified, to keep up with changes in politics,...
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