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'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.
Unknown host pong.
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?
webpage
IN real life, there ARE patients who wind up sueing every doctor in town. There are patients who try to scam painkillers off of doctors, there are patients who try to forge perscriptions for Morphine at pharmacies.
Yes, some patients do have real legitimate cases, but if they wind up sueing more than 2 doctors, do you want to take them in as your patient? Why don't you pay thousands a month in malpractice insurance, and let me know what you will do. (No, I'm not a doctor, they're just in my family).
This all depends on the doctor. I'm sure he'll call up his friend Dr. Phil and ask why the lady was sueing him. If she was stepping on every word he said in his own office, then I'm sure the doctor won't take the case, as is his prerogative. You can't sue for abandonment if the doctor won't even take your case. Besides, the lawsuit record has been availible for some time, I could go online and search the plaintiff lists to see if my neighbor sued anyone recently. So can landlords and the rest of the world.
Two weeks ago, the MA legislature passed a bill called Taylor's Law, that orginally called for putting reprimands of doctors online. The doctor lobby got that provision shot down, arguing that it might stop doctors from freely talking to the board.
If patients in MA can't find out who the problem doctors are, I don't see why doctors should be able to see the names of patients who sued.
Furthermore, membership should definitely be required to add people to the list, otherwise, any quack who gets justifiably sued can easily add his or her patients to the list out of spite.
The problem is that both sides have bad apples. Sure you have some bad doctors that really shouldn't be practicing. But you also have some people who want easy money from malpractice insurance companies who are most likely to settle that to fight it out in court. The idea of lawsuits as a source of incoming isn't patented by SCO as yet.
So basically both the patients and the doctor get screwed and the lawyers come out on top.
This guy is way out there
This kinda of reminds me of going into a store and seeing people's bad checks on the wall....
People sue at the drop of the hat nowadays....and the lawyers are waiting in the shadows.
A person will NOT be denied life threatening health care...
but what if someone with a history of lawsuits(frivilous or not) wants high risk surgery from you? Would you be willing to bet your career and finanicial well being on them?
Information is freedom, right?
Imagine how you'll be treated when your chart has you labeled as "malpractice lawsuit plaintiff." The doctor won't even come into the room.
Think that's bad? Imagine how you would be treated as a lawyer! Once they find out you're a lawyer many doctors will run ten times as many tests as they otherwise would. It pays to keep your mouth shut (or even lie) about your profession.
Lawsuits are, and have always been, a matter of public record. Perhaps people who abuse the system should consider this fact.
Sorry, no sympathy for those on the blacklist.
sulli
RTFJ.
If doctors think this is a good idea why are they so opposed to keeping their own legal/discipline records away from the public?
Although I acknowledge that there are good reasons for suing a doctor, most of them are not. Doctors are human, they're doing the best they can.
If a treatment has a 80% chance of working, and 5% chance of killing you is it a mistake to recommend it? What if you'd die anyways, just 5 years down the road? You'd have 80% chance at life. I think most of us would agree that it's not a mistake to try it. If a patient dies because of that treatment - was it a mistake? I could see only one problem - that's if/when the doctor did not explain the odds/risks.
I see way too many people suing because they need to be protected from themselves.
Do you know what that part means?
if malpractice is real, the lifetime 'costs' of taking care of the incident is covered, plus a maximum of 250k for pain and suffering..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Kill the lawyers and the problem goes away.
And they lived happily ever after..
Truth is, while there are scum lawyers, there are also lawyers protecting our rights, EFF and every other non-profit group has lawyers.
I'd rather see some reform, but can you imagine the lawyers on that aspect.
Doctors and patients both have an interest in knowing about the litigation history of their counterparts. A patient complains of poor medical treatment, sues, settles and moves on to another part of the country, to deal with another doctor and another insurance company. While many patients have legitimate gripes, I for one can attest from personal experience that others are not.
Sometimes you can find out by discovery the patient's prior litigation history, and other times they lie. The bad ones, unsurprisingly, lie. Extensive investigation can disclose the lie, which pretty much nails the case, but when you don't, you have been stung, and the "professional patient" scores another scam.
For the most parts, doctors are honest and honorable, did as well as they could, and patients are honest and honorable, and were grievously harmed. Sometimes the injury was due to neglgence, other times not. Accordingly, the record of the existence of a lawsuit doesn't tell the entire story, not ever. But it is very, very useful information.
As a patient, you want to know if a doctor has a long history of being a defendant. As a doctor, you want to know if a patient has a long history of being a plaintiff. It may make your decision, or not, but it is information you would rather have at the outset of a relationship than not.
NONE OF THIS, however, is private information. While details of medical history are for the most part confidential, the existence of a plaintiff and defendant and a lawsuit are public record. It is just that clerk of court information isn't readily available to everybody.
It may not surprise you to know that for years, consortiums of plaintiff and defense attorneys have kept databases of expert witnesses, plaintiffs and defendants. The fact that the internet has made this information much cheaper and more readily available is, in my view, a very good thing.
Once again, the truth shall set you free.
The question is how the information is used. That is the issue.
Um, good? In other words, doctors will exercise more diligence and generally do things to avoid getting sued, namely screwing up. I think I'll tell them all I'm a lawyer, thanks for the good idea!
I suppose it wouldn't matter to you that it would be a massive waste of time and money that would be driving everyone's insurance premiums up?
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
I've been wondering where skyrocketing malpractice insurance premiums would eventually lead. This sucks, but something like this had to happen, eventually.
We want a perfect medical system where mistakes are minimized as much as possible, which lawsuits will encourage. But the cost adds up in terms of the risk that this system exposes individual doctors to--basically, being sued out of business. Every doctor will make a mistake at some point in his/her career, and that mistake might cost him/her everything.
Strangely, though, the availability of insurance screws this up. Those huge punitive awards are meant to pressure doctors not to screw up, but since virtually every practicing doctor has insurance, the cost of a lawsuit is spread over all of the doctors in terms of high insurance premiums. Since the pressure isn't specifically directed to punish the doctor that screws up (more so than any other doctor), its impact is limited.
And actually, those huge damage amounts are also a side-effect of insurance. You can't impose a $50-million judgement on a doctor who might be worth $1-3 million or so. Juries get a lot more open to imposing huge awards when they realize that the direct payee of the award is a faceless insurance company. Of course, everybody gets hurt on the back end, but that rarely occurs to anyone.
Honestly, it makes a lot more sense to cap/eliminate punitive awards in these cases, and to impose mandated penalties on doctors who lose malpractice cases: revoke medical licenses, ban from practice for a specified period. It's not perfect, but it won't end up being as expensive as the current mechanisms.
If you want doctors to perform high-risk procedures (like delivering babies, certain surgeries, etc), you have to protect them from lawsuits. Many obstetricians have decided to stop delivering babies in certain states because getting malpractice insurance is too expensive - over $200,000 a year in some cases. This is largely due to the fact that if *anything* goes wrong in the delivery room, even things that no one could prevent, the parents often sue.
It is nice to say that a doctor should treat everyone and not discriminate against lawsuit-happy patients, but that is just not possible. A physician will not be able to stay in business if he or she picks up too many patients like that.
Another thing - If doctors can't pay for malpractice insurance, they can simply stop performing risky procedures or treating patients who have uncertain prognoses. But then who will care for the patients who only have a small chance of recovery? Will a doctor want to risk having the patient die and then having the family sue?
As someone who grew up in and around doctors offices the vast majority of medical lawsuits at least in our small Texas town were brought by a small number of pathological people. Literally any visit to a doctor's office would be followed by a lawsuit.
While there are certainly people with valid complaints and suits, in my experience the system is so abused that this is a sad but logical outcome of years of frivolous suits.
I think the fault in issues like this ultimately lies with the judicial systems. While there are easy ways to get away with things like frivolous lawsuits then there are gonna be hordes of lawyers who are making their living off of them, and the whole paranoia that is present in different fields which are often central in such cases. There needs to be a more enforced writ of "Shit Happens" and an acknowledgement that sometimes it's no one's fault...and sometimes it's the vitim's stupidity's fault, and all the shades of gray in between. Random misquote... "A jury is a group of people who are chosen to decide who has a better lawyer"...Will Rogers??
I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
-=humor mode on=-
Should we get mad at the bunnies for running away when we walk through the field dressed as a hunters?
-=mode off=-
I actually take care of several lawyers in my practice. There is usually a big "gulp" of worry initially--they I kid about it on subsquent visits and we forget about it.
Most lawyers are educated people and can easily help make most medical decisions.
I say, "Hey, I am 75% sure this is what you've got... You want to try this treatment or would you rather run a few more tests? Test X and Y would make me 10% more sure of your diagnosis."
Then it is our decision about testing. If I miss that hidden rare zebra cancer... then it is both our faults.
Davak
To be honest... I think insurance rates have increased mainly from the increasing cost of practicing medicine as a whole.
Working in an ICU, I can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a day on tests that were not even available 20 years ago. I can spend an equal amount of money on medicines that were not around 2 years ago.
Although I would love to blame increasing insurance rates on the lawsuits, it is really that our society demands that people receive the best possible medicial care -- and that best possible medical care gets more and more expensive everyday.
Davak
Some/many/most doctors are opposed to having their discipline records public for the same reason you should say nothing if you're brought into the police station for questioning, even if you're innocent:
You have *NOTHING* to gain from talking. If you have a choice between two courses of action, and one will do you no good and may or may not cause you harm, and the other will also do you no good but definitely won't cause you harm, which course of action do you choose?
I also suspect that even if doctors maintain such a blacklist, they're probably also smart enough to filter out people from the blacklist on a case-by-case basis.
Either way, the REAL solution to this problem is to make malpractice covered by a patient's insurance company. If your doctor screws up, your insurance company pays the malpractice claim - that way people can choose to pay for the amount of malpractice coverage they want, instead of forcing everyone to pay for those who abuse the system.
paintball
Sorry to reply to my own message... but I left out a couple of other factors that are causing everybody's insurance rates to increase.
- The average person is older. Older people need more medical care -> more money.
- The average person is fatter. Fatter people meed more medical care -> more money.
- People that used to die from severe disease (HIV, pulmonary hypertension) can now be kept alive using expensive medications and treatments -> more money.
We can't just blame the damn lawyers for everything...
Davak
Imagine how it feels to be a doctor! If you make one mistake (and who here has NEVER made a mistake at work? Especially ER doc who can get called in a 4am) you can be personally sued, ruining your life and your entire family's life, stopping you from ever working again, and thus not being able to get a chance to save more lives. Oops, your bankrupt because you just lost a suit for $2billion while your malpractice only covered you up to $500million. Now your kids can't go to college, you have to sell all of your posessions, no insurance company will cover you so you can't work now--all because, after dedicating your life to saving lives, there is one thing you didn't think of while trying to save another life. And AFTER THE FACT, some lawyer makes a very emotional argument to a jury of weak-mided suckers. I am sure if a doc in the emergency room had as much time to waste analyzing everything as the lawyer took, there would be far fewer mistakes. But when someone is wheeled in bleeding, you have to think FAST. You can't always be perfect.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
And not because healthcare doesn't work when provided by the state (that it doesn't is mostly a myth pedalled by the people who make all that lovely money overcharging US citizen s for medical insurance and drugs), but amongst other things because you are better off being paid a state wage than paid a US wage and having to pay for the insurance.
Remember the problem with central planning is not usually quality but inefficient allocation of resources. I might have to share a doctors waiting room with such "horrors" as poor people. I might effectively pay a little more if I choose to see a doctor privately 'right now', but that is a lot better than having someone swiping my credit card before he'll scrape me up after an accident.
>Now your kids can't go to college, you have to sell all of your posessions, no insurance company will cover you
Right now there's a big battle between doctors and trial lawyers in regards to putting caps on damages regardless of how grossly negligent the doctor was.
Simply put, they want you to pick a side and this website and rhetoric about 'poor doctors' is a ploy to win the caps battle. Personaly, I refuse to take sides as both sides are losing propositions. A real solution would require regulating both doctors and lawyers and neither party wants that because that means less profit, thus little war of attrition.
The doctors (AMA) want me to give up my essential rights to sue for damages because they supposedly can't afford insurance.
The lawyers still want to be able to collect 1/3rd of my damages.
I think this situation shows a larger problem: people getting the shaft from two well organized and powerful lobbies. I'd rather see lawyers unable to collect so much from me and see medicine socialized/single-payment/regulated so I can actually see a doctor now and again. In the meantime its the wealthy vs the wealthy at the expense of you and me.
Nice to know that you can get blacklisted for suing the doctor that caused massive brain damage to your kid
And it's nice to know you're adept at expressing a biased, one-sided comment that absolutely destroys any credibilty you had in posting on this very complex topic of doctors and lawsuits.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Add twelve people not smart enough to get out of jury duty and you have yet another millionaire malpractice attorney in the making
It may be the case that some people believe serving on jury *duty* fulfills one of their obligations to society. If that's difficult to comprehend, think of it this way: those smart people who feel strongly that the typical juror is of inferior intelligence and excessively gullible should, if they are the smart ones, sit on a jury so that the decisions turn out according to their enlightened notion of justice. Isn't that what the smart people do?
I would agree that there is extreme BS on both sides, it seems that human nature has partly evolved into blaming what ever on someone else.
However, in the case you spoke about - my first guess is that the Doc's attorney did not put much into the case thinking it was blatant BS just like we do, but the plantiff's attorney didn't take that stance and probably bind sided the defense's attorney with stuff he did not expect...
There has to be some kind of plausable reason for something as dumb as this being victorious.
Income tax is not the sum total of all taxes. His statistics are valid enough for income tax, but that's hardly the whole story. The average working stiff pays almost nothing in income taxes; perfecly true. However this does *not* mean that the average working stiff pays no taxes. Most people pay the vast majority of their taxes in the form of payroll taxes. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, FICA, etc. Those are only the Federal taxes, of course. Local taxes (sales tax, property tax, telephone tax, electricity tax, gas (both methane and petrol) taxes, etc) are a hefty bite as well. Social Security alone accounts for a huge bite out of the average person's paycheck and is also one of the most regressive taxes in existance. Only the first $86,000 a person makes are subject to Social Security tax, which means that 100% of my income gets hit with Social Security tax, but less than .001% of Bill Gates' income is subject to SS tax. A politician who proposed leveling SS taxes would get my vote immediately and without reservation.
The upper 1% of the population pays around 33% of all tax money that goes to Washington. Yup, absolutely true. The thing is that the upper 1% has around 33% of the money. On a dollar for dollar basis they actually pay slightly less than the lower 50% do. Far from being overtaxed, the upper 1% are (assuming that everyone should pay an equal percentage of their wealth) slightly under taxed.
As for the writer's conclusion that we ought to consider limiting the franchise to people who pay X dollars in (watch his language here) *income*taxes* it sounds like he's just dying to establish a classic plutocracy. Those in power, now possessing exclusive voting franchise could quite easily define "income tax" to exclude incredibly large portions of society while increasing the various non-"income taxes" with impunity. Taxation without representation anyone?
On a practical note, I will point out that every single member of the elected Federal government, as well as every single member of the past 5 president's Cabinets, falls into the upper 1%. Most fall into the upper 1/10th of 1%. The economic elite are hardly underrepresented in government; quite the opposite really (side note: I refer to their income prior to becoming a member of government here). I personally would like to see just *one* person in the Federal government who falls into the "lower" 70%. I will observe that the Federal government (under past administrations as well as the current administration) seems quite content to emplace policies that primarially benefit the economic elite, while occasionally tossing a bone to the rest of the nation. What baffles me is that people keep voting for government by, of, and for millionares...
History has shown us that while voting requirements often sound good on paper they never really work in practice. Just like Communism, or lassie-faire capitalism, its an idea that simply does not work in the real world. Inevitably the best intentioned voter requirements become nothing more than a tool of oppression. In my own ideal fantasy world you couldn't vote unless you displayed a knowledge of the *facts* in current affairs. The difference between me and the person who wrote the article you reference is that I'm mature enough to know that my fantasy won't work in reality; he doesn't seem to have reached that point yet.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Thank you.
I have served on three juries (including one as foreman). I could easily have "beaten the system" and gotten out of it, but I considered it my duty.
After all, if I wind up on trial for something, I don't want a jury of "12 people not smart enough to get out of jury duty".
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
If you can prove either of these 2 statements in your post, I'll put my own name on the list of black-balled attorneys:
1. "99% of these lawsuits that people file against doctors that supposedly caused 'brain damage' to children when they were born are completly bogus." OR
2. "The total crap part is that you can sue ANYTIME after birth and claim that the doctor that delivered you caused any problems that you have now."
The fact is that profit and greed by insurance companies have driven medical costs through the roof in this country, not lawsuits. There is not a single state in the U.S. where medical malpractice OR health insurance premiums have come down by $0.01 since the introduction of any tort "reform" measure.
The next time some doctor or insurance hack tells you some supposed horror story about having to pay millions of dollars because of what he/she considers to be a bogus "frivolous" lawsuit, ask him/her the following:
1. If you had a pay all this money, why didn't you go to trial and prove your case?
2. If they answer, "my insurance company made me settle," then ask them why they rolled over on their principles because some faceless insurance company told them to.
Then, when they get done bad-mouthing everyone they've seen in the last 20 years, ask them for the name of the case and the court it was in. Then, take an hour of YOUR time, go down to the courthouse and look through the case file for the true picture.
Don't take my word for it; go look for yourself. That's the beauty of our Constitution here in the U.S.A. and I would be extremely suspect of anyone who advocates a system that wants to take away your constitutional right to a jury trial, the right of access to the court system, and your right to a fair and impartial decision maker.
The fact is that profit and greed by insurance companies have driven medical costs through the roof in this country, not lawsuits.
Really? Then why are medical insurance companies pulling out of Nevada?
Insuring doctors in a state with no medical tort reform is a net loss. The greedy insurance company would not pull out of a whole state unless that state were simply unprofitable. That seems to suggest that lawsuits have a lot to do with medical costs.
There is not a single state in the U.S. where medical malpractice OR health insurance premiums have come down by $0.01 since the introduction of any tort "reform" measure.
You are neglecting to mention that medical malpractice and health insurance premiums are shooting up in states that do not have any tort reform measure. The rate of growth in protected states is lower than that of unprotected states.
(The Nevada legislature enacted a reform measure, but malpractice lawyers and departing insurance companies are quick to point out that its constitutionality hasn't been determined, thus the standard "sky's the limit" policy remains the force driving out insurance companies)
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
I'd like to play Devil's Advocate. Your doctor friend, after taking the Hippocratic Oath, let people die because of the reputation that people in general have for being lawsuit-happy.
It's a fucked if you do, fucked if you don't situation, but the other guy is fucking dead when the doctor didn't.
Or it coulda been two guys with a couple scratches (as head ons usually are...?). I hope the Doc's conscience is clear when he's sprawled out on the pavement and fading away and all the pussy doctors in the area take a hike just like him.
"There has to be some kind of plausable reason for something as dumb as this being victorious."
Maybe because the parent poster is lying. I mean, the statute of limitations on the tort probably already expired. (The kid's eighteen, after all.) The parent poster can reply with name of the case.
This isn't flamebait. I'm just annoyed at people who make quick, uninformed judgments. Normally, medical malpractice cases are extremely difficult to vindicate because the average jury, who just like you, hates malpractice lawyers, has to find by a clear preponderance of the evidence that something wrong happened. To convince a jury of this requires expensive medical expert testimony that is rebutted by the other side. The plaintiff has the burden of persuasion just like the prosecution in a criminal case.
Findings of guilt usually doesn't happen unless the doctor does something blantantly wrong and against medical protocol, such as leaving an instrument behind, amputating the wrong leg, or twisting a baby's head with forceps. Everything else is just too hard for a jury to understand and find guilt on.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/