Slashdot Mirror
'They Can Sue, But They Can't Hide'
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times (free reg's yada, yada) has this article about Texas doctors running an online blacklist of patients who have sued. The searchable database is at doctorsknow.us. Nice to know that you can get blacklisted for suing the doctor that caused massive brain damage to your kid (and winning)." To add a plaintiff to the database, membership was not always required.
If you're a patient, check ChoiceTrust.
I've had arguments with doctors I know who take a highly visceral reaction to malpractice suits and jury awards. Nearly every one of them rails against what they perceive as a litigious US culture, and speaks with unquestioned confidence about how lawsuits are:
- driving up insurance costs
- unfairly assuming medical perfection
- making it unattractive or impossible to practice medicing in the US
What I find amazing is the fact that NONE of the statistics support any of these positions. According to two recent studies - one by the AMA and the other by the Harvard Public Policy school (?, I believe the Harvard Medical Practice Study) - both found that:
- malpractice, at least as defined by negligence, is fairly common
- of those with valid claims, only about 1% actually bring suit against a doctor
- of those who bring suit, only 1% are successful
This means that 1/100 of a percent of incidents of malpractice actually result in an award. Then you have the fact that the review committees in every case are made up of doctors and professionals, the act that an attorney who doesn't think a case is worth his effort or will reach an award won't even bother PURSUING the case, etc.
I'm also reminded of another study conducted in NY a few years back. If I remember correctly the study found that of all malpractice claims in the state less that 10 doctors were responsible for nearly 50% of the cases. Why were they practicing? Because the medical review boards hed declined to suspend their licenses for the incidents. These are people like the guy who operated on the wrong side of his patients skull, the guy who carved his initials into his patients abdomens etc.
You would think that after 30 years of schooling doctors - SCIENCISTS - would be intelligent enough to seek actual EVIDENCE to support their absurd claims; even the AMA disagrees with them! You'd think that GOOD doctors (and there are many) would be tired of paying exorbitant fees to subsidize the negligence of their incapable colleagues. You'd also think they'd be intelligent enough to bother examining the various mergers in the insurance industry and price increases in the face of decreased competition before leaping to absurd claims regarding jury awards and civil suits.
Bottom line: I'd like to see a comparable database of every doctor in the United States with every incident of potential malpractice, lawsuits, complaints, or peer review comprehensivlely outlined and available to the public. I'd like to see doctors held to a national standard of quality, put on suspension when there actions merit it, and suspended when they cross a threshold like ANY OTHER PROFESSION (say hello to the Bar). Will we see these things in the near future? No, because doctors have no interest in policing themselves and facing up to the truth of the situation.
The whole thing just makes me ill.
-rt
I personally know a few doctors, and malpractice lawsuits have gotten out of hand. Insurance for doctors has skyrocketed to an incredible rate. Somehow there must be a balance between the two - let them sue, but not too much?
High insurances rates aren't being caused by malpractice lawsuits; they're being caused by the stock market tanking. The medical insurance companies' holdings took a massive beating and they're raising rates to compensate.
States(like Florida) that have passed caps on damages for malpratice have insurance premiums just as high as the rest of the nation.
Tort reform is about making screwups a low, predictable cost of doing business and lawyers have become convienient scapegoats for those who would like to avoid responsibility for their actions.
In the end, the biggest(and highest profile) awards inevitably end up being against companies and people that repeatedly ignored the problem. It's funny that for a readership that decries so many abuses by corporate America, an awful lot of Slashdoters seem willing to castrate one of few remaining ways an individual person can hold a corporation accountable.
In California there is a massive shortage of obstetricians (baby-deliverers) because it's such a risky job. If the baby is still born the parents will find someway to blame someone; it's just a natural reaction to a tragedy.
Unfortunately this leads to many trials that are unwarranted and yet the parents still win. Now you almost have to leave the state if you want to have a baby.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
He diagosed you wrong? That happens. Get over it.
My mom was misdiagnosed with cancer. She had chemotherapy and a hysterectomy(no more kids), but she's always suspected she was misdiagnosed. Now, 25 years later, she's have numerous and serious health problems related to the treatment that have nearly cost her life.
And while it pissed her off, she was willing to just 'get over it'.
Until she found the same doctor misdiagnosed DOZENS of women and had them undergo the same treatment. And nearly all of them are having the same health problems my mom is having now.
But hey, I guess that sort of thing just 'happens.'
Here is an article that mentions this exact situation. A lawyer sued someone who refused to sell to him, but he ultimately lost.
Every detail of my professional life, including my home address, any criminal arrests or convictions, lawsuits or disciplinary actions, is required by Florida law to be online.
http://ww2.doh.state.fl.us/irm00profiling/searchf
If I get arrested for DUI (not convicted, just arrested) I would have to undergo a years-long period of intensive intervention and probabtion, or I would lose my license.
If I have to undego all this, why shouldn't everyone be forced to undergo this sort of scrutiny???
Suck it up, people!
Steve
I can't recall hearing of a large judgement against a doctor, hospital, or HMO recently where the case was minor.
No. But it still COSTS MONEY to defend the minor cases. That's the problem on the legal side.
If Joe Patient sues me because he had to have his ingrown toenail removed again, I now have to defend myself, even though the case is trivial. So my insurance blows 10K+ defending this trivial case, and I've got to pay more insurance.
When I was in Med School in Alabama, we had two lectures from Lawyers, one from a Plaintiff's lawyer and one from a Defense Lawyer. Both stated that in Alabama, only 20% of cases brought to trial in the state ended in Plantiff Verdicts. So, consider the amount of money spent defending the other 80% that went to court and the innumerable others that were settled out of court and it becomes easier to see the scope of the problem. It's one of the reasons that some in the medical field are pushing for a Medical Court or Medical Approval Board that deems whether a malpractice case can/should be pursued.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
The injured (burned) plaintiff in this case, 79 year old Stella Lieback, was not driving her car. She was seated as the passenger in her grandson's parked car, holding the coffee cup between her legs while removing the plastic lid. The cup tipped over and poured the scalding hot coffee into her lap causing third degree burns.
Before claiming something is baseless, first look at all the facts.
Fight Spammers!
Good Samaritan laws (which is amusing if you know the history of the Samaritans... which is why their being a good one was noteworthy) normally protect someone... The general rule of thumb is that if you are trying to help, as a good samaritan, you are immune from lawsuits... It's the type of law that is on the books to protect people that are being good Americans from our out-of-control legal system.
There is probably a medical ethics law or something similar that you are thinking of.
There are "good samaritan" laws around here that say since he's a doctor, he's obliged to help.
I don't know what it is like in the states, but in Canada, the Good Samaritan Act is intended to protect people who help out accident victims, not to force people to help out.
Really? What are you doing that exposes you to so many bacterial infections?
Most common ailments from which people suffer (most coughs and colds, the flu) are viral infections. Antibiotics don't have any effect on them whatsoever.
By taking antibiotics for those diseases, you're doing yourself no good, and probably hurting yourself. First, you're knocking out the population of healthy, symbiotic bacteria in your gut that aid digestion and do a number of other useful things for you. Second, by knocking down the healthy population of bacteria, you leave behind a fertile open ground for nasty bacteria to colonize. Then you need antibiotics, perhaps...
Please, I encourage you to consult a physician (or at least a veterinarian) before self-medicating further.
~Idarubicin
I'd get your facts straight about Nevada first:
Before a patient victimized by medical malpractice may file a lawsuit in Nevada District Court, the patient must submit a claim to the Medical Dental Screening Panel, consisting of six professionals - three doctors and three attorneys.
Before a patient victimized by medical malpractice may file a claim, another doctor must sign an affidavit under oath that medical malpractice occurred and caused injury to the patient.
In medical malpractice claims, Nevada has a loser pays system. If a patient victimized by medical malpractice loses at the screening panel, proceeds to court and loses at trial, the victim must pay the doctors attorneys fees and costs. Recent examples include awards against victims in excess of $100,000.
Nevada has over 4,000 doctors, 16,000 Registered Nurses, and more than 2,000 Licensed Practical Nurses. Every day, thousands of procedures (e.g., surgery, blood transfusions, medication administration, diagnoses) are performed in Nevada. In 2001, 219 claims were filed at the screening panel, 181 of which were filed in Clark County.
Finally, let's put this all into perspective:
The St. Paul insurance company paid out about $19.6 million in Nevada malpractice claims in the same year that it lost over $108 Million related to Enron: http://www.ntla.org/medmal/Exhibita.pdf
Last time I checked, St. Paul hasn't stopped insuring other businesses or pushed for caps on claims made by fraudulent businesses like Enron whose entire business plan was the corporate equivalent of supposed ambulance-chasing malpractice victims. That wouldn't go over too well in the boardroom; it's a heckuva lot easier to conjure up some smoke-and-mirror "crisis" targeted against individual claimants who have neither the corporate nor financial wherewithal to mount a unified front to defeat such nonsense.
You talk about OBs, well if you've ever had a baby you would know that the doctor is usually only present for a couple of minutes, the nurses do everything. Guess who gets the bulk of the pay though...
Tell me about it. I'm in a program with a certified nurse-midwife as my primary care provider. After 23 weeks of pregnancy, I haven't seen a "doctor" at all (which I'm fine with). However, I've already paid a deposit on my expected co-pay for the *doctor's* delivery charges... which I won't owe them until sometime in late June or early July.
Granted, they are charging me in advance because apparently the routine visits throughout the pregnancy are all packaged in with the delivery according to my insurance company, so they get *no* payment until the baby is delivered... and have some difficulty collecting if I up and deliver somewhere else. But no one has ever been able to explain to me why I'm paying for a doctor's services in a program where I don't actually see one.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I know an AC (a troll) who once posted a complete lie...
Good Samaritan Laws (enacted in every state in the USA) protect people who perform CPR and emergency care from lawsuits over injuries sustained during the care.
So if you are CPR-certified, and crack a heart attack victim's ribs after they consent* for you to perform CPR on them, they can't sue you for the cracked ribs.
Good Samaritan laws do not obligate anybody to help somebody in an emergency. Not helping somebody in an emergency is perfectly legal.
Btw, I am a law student, and CPR-certified.
*: You can obtain regular consent or implied consent. Implied consent is when a person is unable to consent (usually due to being unconcious) but a reasonable person would likely consent. Handy if somebody is choking on food but won't consent to the heimlich, because as soon as they pass out, you can perform rescue breathing/unconcious choking care on them.
As an AC mentioned, I don't think they were a horrible people, but there was a lot of mutual animosity between them and the Jews. There had been a recent incident involving defacing a temple, and so Jews were actually praying that Samaritans would not get eternal life. You can read the parable itself at Luke 10:30 and a good analysis here. It mentions why the priest and Levite were reluctant to help, and why the Samaritan would be as well. Yet of course the despised Samaritan does what the others would not.
I'm an atheist, but I like this parable. And it seems that most people neither understand the historical details nor understand that they can be the good Samaritan in their daily lives.
I wish I could find the sources, please someone with more knowledge of law help me here..
As I understand it, the crisis started when a doctor who had only (insert amount here, I don't remember how much. Try about 3 million) coverage. He lost a malpratice suit. The jury awarded (I think hundreds of millions) in dammages. The insurance company paid the policy limit. The court objected and forced the insurer to pay way beyond the coverage plan. (I think it was a defective baby case). Due to this opening of the cap on insurance policies, insurers found they were charging rates for a (one or two) million policy, but had the liability of (a good part of a billion) in coverage. Needless to say they started to charge for (maybe 500) million policies instead of one or two because the court re-wrote the doctors policies. With a policy limit removed by the courts, we have the spiral of hit the deep pockets with lawsuits and charging for the big policies that the courts mandated. The mistake happened when a multi hundred million award was forced out of a several million policy. That broke the insurance system.
Any history buff want to help me fill in the blanks? Anybody want to prove me wrong?
The truth shall set you free!