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.
Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode called "The Package," when Elaine keeps getting the shaft at the doctor's office after being labeled as "difficult."
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.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
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.
...it's a bad and dangerous thing... an inhumane thing!
Then again, in this litigious country, we all need to find ways to protect ourselves... there are probably very good doctors out there who just want to keep their jobs.
Kill the lawyers and the problem goes away.
If a doctor screws up, they pay the price. If a doctor won't serve you because you've sued someone in the past for malpractice (and won), what does that say about the doctor?
Although this is slightly irrelevent, my grandmother was given bad medication from a doctor that conflicted with her other medication. She was in the hostipal for quite awhile and is still recovering. We didn't sue because apparently we wouldn't get anything out of it, because she's on Medicaid or medicare or whatever. I don't know what action my mom is taking, or if he's right about the lawsuit deal, but eh.
This is a good thing for patients. If a doctor needs to check if you've had a record dealing with bad doctors, then he probably sucks (and knows it) too.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
I would think that most doctors would realize there are situations where a malpractice suit is warranted and necessary.
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.
Create a free public online database of doctors who have been sued and the reasons why. I know there are dbs out there with info on docs, but it's generally very limited, I assume for fear of lawsuit :-)
There are a lot of wacko sue crazy people out there and doctors are a prime target for idiots to sue. If I were them I'd blacklist sue crazy people too. I dont think you should be blacklisted for being in the list once but 3-4 times starts to look fishy.
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.
Doctors are easy targets. They have money and there is no penalty for sueing them and failing because it's hard as hell to prove a patient is just taking pot shots. I'm glad to see that doctors now have recompense against people who are just trying for a quick buck.
I do security
So basically both the patients and the doctor get screwed and the lawyers come out on top.
This guy is way out there
The post puts a negative spin on the issue, and I CAN CLEARLY see why.
However, the system might be good for finding repeat suers, which could bring down the cost of malpractice insurance and possibly lower the cost of insurance, therefore helping a great many people. That's not to say that would necessarily happen. But if insurance market (which I know little about) was competitive (price driven), it might work out for the better.
still, I'd hate so see someone get hurt because their doctor wouldn't help them because a previous doctor took the wrong leg off.
Doctors might be able to turn away patients, but emergency rooms sure can't. So, in the end, somebody's going to have to try to treat these "blacklisted" people...
And people who go to the ER for something a PCP should be taking care of just drive up expenses and costs for everybody...
I wonder what they use to uniquely identify patients? I mean, going by name isn't very useful, unless you know that previous addresses of your new patients.
/me is too lazy to try to sign up for free trial.
Most charts include your social security number, is it legal for them to use this, or do they have another way?
I'm against frivolous lawsuits like everyone else, but this is like extortion. Imagine a patient is wronged by an incompetent doctor, and they sue for damages. Other doctors are basically saying that this patient likely will never get care again?
Texas already passed Proposition 12 last year capping jury awards for non-economic damages in malpractice cases to $250,000. So parents whose children have the misfortune of needing expensive medical care must be even more wary.
I guess these Texas doctors are saying, "Oh, you'll pay a pretty penny for care. But don't even think about holding our professional accountable for incompetence."
If these doctors believe there's nothing wrong with this list, I'd like to see a list of doctors who are members of that organization.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
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?
pardon the pun
not all cases are black and white, and there are definitly some patients who are more likely to sue than others (especially those who have sued before). Malpractice insurance is so expensive these days, losing a suit like this can get your coverage yanked effectively putting you out of business. While no doctor wants to sit there and screen patients based on the likelyhood of them suing, it is a reality that is part of the medical world today.
Yeah it sounds horrible in the case where the doctor really f'd up, but tons of malpractice cases are bullshit and really put a strain on the doctor's ability to do business.
If I was a doctor (in a non-emergency case), hell yeah I'd want to know if a patient has sued before and under what circumstances because this is about protecting my livelihood.
The expert whose decision in a lawsuit is most important is a doctor.
For several thousands of lawsuits, less than 10 were won by the patienst.
People with sponges, scissors, pieces of bandaid left in their bodies during a surgery lost. People whose relatives died because the doctor administered a drug that works opposite to what was obviously required, lost. Doctors found drunk on duty were claimed innocent.
Be happy that you can win at all.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
There was a story some time back about a new housing development that was built, but had the restriction that no lawyers were allowed to buy any of the homes. The construction company feared that they would be sued if anything was wrong with any of the homes. This restriction was only discovered when a lawyer attempted to buy one of the homes. So he sued the company for discrimination.
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?
For programs that do not work.
I think I should be able to sue the provider of any software package for any economic harm caused by it.
Geez, I could sue every Linux Developer, every Windows developer, and I could probably get a few hundred bucks out of each.
Oh, suddenly this seems unfair?
Maybe Doctors are just looking for some balance in litigation?
This is my sig.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
The situation is not a patient suing a doctor. It is patients who sue for 6 million because someone made a mistake , do some doctors commit malcious behavoir or willful neglicence. People make mistakes and because of this apprently a person needs 10million dollars to make it better. Malpractice insurance is out of control , it keeps all medical costs up and makes it harder for real people with real problems to get treatment. I don't think they would have created this website if the majority of lawsuits were either not exaggerated or under false pretenses.
I think it is about time somethign like this happened. Alot of doctors are going without malpractice insurance to save money and lower costs to the patient. Something like this will help them achive this goal.
I wouldn't want to have a law suite happy client either. In all reality the people that sue thier doctors (or anynone for that matter) are usually looking for a cashcow. If they only were allowed to recover expenses incured because of the malpractrice/whatever then there would be alot less law suites going on.
Geting an extra 5 mil becuase something went wrong and they lost a patient or an arm or somethign doesn't really help anyone. It serves no purpose other than to enrich the plantif and cause the prices of medical proceedures to skyrocket. People think there is money availible and they want it.
As a Canadian I can't even imagine not getting "free" medical care. It's nice not having to worry about that at least. Sure service may not be as fast as in the US but I suspect that has to do more with population density.
God, I wish I could think of a sig!
...to rising health care costs, which result from the overabundance of law suits. Only the seriously injured people sue. I can certainly feel for the legitimately injured being put on this list, but if their case had merit, it shouldn't make good doctors afraid to deal with them.
i have heard of cases where ob/gyns would not accept patients that were lawyers that has pursued malpractice actions. while it was interesting to hear women lawyers bitch about having to leave their county to find a doctor, it was *more* interesting to find out how many people felt no sorrow for them.
eric
The cost of malpractice insurance is incredible. A close relation pays something on the order of $50K/year in insurance; this in a rural, close-knit community in a low-risk practice (as compared to, say, pediatrics).
This isn't "anti-consumer" behavior, it's defensive medicine. A doctor that doesn't practice because he's sick of being sued every other week for bogus cases isn't doing anybody any good.
I wonder if all the "programmers" who rail on Slashdot would be willing to take responsibility for every bug they write? To the extent that they have to buy liability insurance in case somebody uses their shitty program to do something important? No, of course not--that's why all those licenses for "Open Source" half-assed hacks are littered with "Yeah, I wrote this, but if you use it for something important, IT'S NOT MY FAULT, NUH-UH, I'M JUST A FAT SLOB PROGRAMMER, FNORD! *snort snort*" But you'll moan about doctors that can (and do) make mistakes. Yeah, consistency sure is an overrated attribute.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
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.
As an American I can't imagine giving my government half of my income. Sure you may have free health care, but I suspect that has more to do with high taxes.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
Its a double edged sword...
Keep in mind the paitents can also create a web page of 'bad doctors'...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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'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.
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.
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?
I love Slashdot.
Damn Government, trying to censor information that wants to be free.
Damn doctors, thinking up new ways to share information.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
The list would be more aceptable if both sides faced a limit on the number of entries. Any doctor submitting too many blacklist candidates is probably incompetent -- one has to wonder why they are being sued so often. And any patient getting too many blacklist submissions is probably a litigious scammer.
If both sides faced consequences for participating on the blacklist, both sides would be more careful about what they do.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Just files my taxes and I paid @ 28% not counting GST (which is put on non-food goods purchased in the store) which I can't quickly estimate. We pay more taxes but we get more. It balances out. If you and anyone in your family never gets sick you obviously win but...
God, I wish I could think of a sig!
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.
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.'
0. Doctor performs inappropriate care.
Need a Catering Connection
This is already modded as a troll, but I'll bite.
Insurance premiums for doctors are as much as (more?) $100k (depending on area, field, etc). Now, for an ordinary doctor that might not be a problem -- you just put your prices up. Insurance trebles? Put your prices up again. Much the same as white box manufactures don't have to worry overmuch about components fluctuating in price since their compeditors will have the same fluctuations. Do you get it? For the average doctor, this insurance won't affect their income at all.
But there are exceptions and they're not good ones. Imagine if you don't want to work fulltime, perhaps you've retiring or have just had a kid. Suddenly $100k goes from being $40 per billable hour to $80 per billable hour, and you can't compete. Conversely, doctors putting in more hours a week can spread the fixed cost thinner, and really rake in the money.
The premiums haven't changed the likelyhood of lawsuits (which is the goal of a higher price in a free market), instead they've made doctors work longer hours and not have families. Dunno about you, but I don't see that as a good solution to lawsuits with stupidly high payouts.
Oh, and don't think this just applies to malpractice insurance. Doctors get hit with all sorts of stupid bills ($1000 for a radiation licence that must be renewed every year at the same cost -- where the licence is just a piece of paper, no tests or checks!?) As above, this is generally just accepted with a shrug and prices passed along.
This database is as usefull to the doctors as it is to the patients. Think about it your looking for a doctor to see you go online search by doctor,specialty and sort by number of occurences in descending order. If your doctor shows up near the top great, if hes near the bottom time to ask a friend for a refferal.
Umm... add it all up. Federal income tax, state income tax, FICA (7.5% visible + 7.5% hidden), sales tax, property tax. You're already probably giving the government about half of your income. And you're already paying the staggering healthcare costs for a most of old the sick retired people who aren't even working.
Somehow you've let people convince you that you should pay high taxes for other peoples' health coverage, but it would be somehow to your disadvantage if you were eligible for benefits under this system that you're paying for.
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
IANAD, but I am an EMT, so I do have a little insight into the protection that those in the medical field need against potential lawsuits. First off, people expect perfection from doctors in even the most impossible instances. Despite what George Clooney and "ER" would have you believe, you do not always save the patient (I won't even get into how many thorachotomies they perform on that show). However, people do not understand the concept of "Not being able to do something". Doctors are human, not Gods. There are many lawsuits that are brought against physicians that are frivalous in most respects, but juries find infavor of the plantiff. There are many cases of pregnant women who come into ER's because they are 3 months premature in labor. The woman is a crack abuser and she's drunk at the time of labor, and she's had no pre-natal care. When the baby is born with birth defects, do you think the woman or juries care about any of this when making multi million dollar rulings in favor of the mother? The answer is no. It's things like this that make malpractice insurance so high for specialities like OB/GYN that there is now a national shortage of OB's who are willing to practice with the system we have. Kings County hospital recently had their cardiac surgery unit suspended because they had a 10% mortality rate. I recently interviewed there for med school and asked about this, and I was told that it's because they didn't selectively choose their patients. Most hospitals around the country will not treat heart patients who do not have a good chance of surviving because it will lead to lower hospital ratings. King's County made a choice and had a unit suspended for it because they tried to give people a chance. So I don't think that physicians are totally out of line when they try to take every precaution they can so that they might be able to continue practicing.
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
Is that while many of the readers here equate this with a "blacklist" of individuals who have filed frivolous lawsuits, it is not. This is merely a listing of individuals who have sued, and the site makes no claims of judgment. From the site itself: "We acknowledge that many of the people in this database may be involved in meritorious malpractice suits." And "DoctorsKnow.Us does not judge fitness of claims." However, by making no claims (and, from the information I see, providing no details about the lawsuit), this site puts clients who filed lawsuits with merit alongside those who filed frivolous lawsuits. The implication seems to be that these are people Doctors need to know about and possibly be wary of.
The site's "Group Monitor" function, which regularly scans the DoctorsKnow.US database for specific names suggests that it's important that doctors need to be aware of any legal proceedings on the part of their patients, without placing any importance on the legitimacy of the claims.
Yes, this is merely a database of publicly available information, but by grouping the information in such a way, in such a venue, the suggestion is that doctors need to be careful about taking these individuals as patients, regardless of whether their case had merit. The thought that doctors could be using this information to turn down patients is highly disturbing.
Though there are, without a doubt, people who abuse the system, but this database groups the innocent with the guilty without any sort of discrimination. Do we really expect the doctors to, after finding a name here, to go and do further research as to whether or not the case was legitimate? Doctors are busy people and their staff are busy too. I fear that such a database will hurt the innocent who have exercised their legal rights just as much (if not more) than it will punish the guilty.
Lets look at some statistics... www.medical-malpractice-lawyers-attorneys.com The two statistics that caught my eye were:
1. From 1996 through 1999, Florida hospitals reported 19,885 incidents but only 3,177 medical malpractice claims. In other words, for every 6 medical errors only 1 claim is filed.
2. Malpractice insurance costs amount to only 3.2 percent of the average physician's revenues according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC)
or this link: Citizen.org:
"10.6 percent of the state's doctors have paid two or more malpractice awards to patientsThese repeat offender doctors are responsible for 84 percent of all payments. Even more surprising, only 4.7 percent of Pennsylvania 's doctors (1,838), each of whom has paid three or more malpractice claims, are responsible for 51.4 percent of all payments. "
Frivolis lawsuits really aren't that much of a problem. I am much more concerned about the increasing privitazation and high price of Prescription drugs in this country.
What if you were a Doctor and Darl McBride was your patient? How would feel about treating him? Knowing that sooner or later he would sue you if you made the slightist miscalulation - like not ordering an entire body CAT scan after he complained of cold related symptoms.
Also, Remember the lady that was supposedly stampeded at a Walmart sale around Christmas? Well it turns out that she has been pulling that stunt on several occasions and reaping a settlement each time. Would you like to treat her as a Doctor?
There are, it seems people that are born to sue.
The creation of this list is just a defensive reaction against are increasing litigious society.
This is the first reference I've seen to a database for physician use about patients. However, you should know that physicians have long had a much more certain guide to difficult patients - namely, word-of-mouth from each other, and from the chart that follows every patient wherever they go.
I don't see an ethical problem for physicians who use it; the Hippocratic oath does not obligate physicians to serve every person who comes to them. Many hospitals reserve the right to refuse service under any of a number of conditions.
However, there are strict guidelines (Privacy Act of 1974 and HIPAA) for the use of databases in health care practice. Among the provisions is the right of patients to view their data and request revisions when appropriate. I looked at the DoctorsKnow.us website, and there doesn't seem to be a provision for a patient to look himself or herself up, see their information, and dispute/correct it. As a private company, they don't need to be HIPAA compliant, but this is a bad precedent.
http://ww2.doh.state.fl.us/irm00profiling/searchfo rm.asp
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.
Sure. Obstetricians pay a near obscene amount, somewhere close to 100 grand a year in premiums, depending on whether premiums are capped in their particular state.
But the physicians don't pay these premiums, we do, in the form of ridiculous insurance payments of our own. Most of us end up overpaying for medical care while people who file nuisance lawsuits make easy money.
So if you don't sue, are you a chump?
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!
In Massachusetts (where I am), all you have to do is point your web browser at the state licensing board and you can find out if there have been any malpractice judgements or settlements, or any disciplinary action against a phyisician licenced in Massachusetts. A few other states also offer this service. If your state doesn't, start complaining to your state representatives.
I am speaking as someone involved in the medical profession in australia, I am not a doctor. All of you idiots screaming that this is a bad idea haven't bothered to understand WHY this has come about. In australia and i suspect the rest of the world the cost of health care is being driven through the roof by insurance costs, becuase of litigation. Nothing wrong with a doctor being taken for malpractise, but no other profession in the world has to put up with this treats FOR 20 YEARS AFTER. the facts are, unless something is done to cork the costs of insurance for medical care, we won't have a health system. doctors don't have to work, you can't force them to put their homes etc at risk from ligtagous pricks as listed.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
>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.
Do a public records search to see if your doctor has been sued for malpractice before. If he has ever been sued, just fire him. You don't want the risk... Isn't that what they are saying to us?
I've lived with lawyers, and they were the most pedanticaly anal assholes I've ever had the mispleasure of sharing a house with. Sure enough, when the flats dissolved, they were writing letters and making demands and generally pissing everyone outside of their clique off (obviously I was one of those on the receiving end). They don't seem to understand that notion of "give and take" that lets people get along smoothly. I can only imagine what landlords have to go through when things get difficult. Give me a flat with laid-back pot-smoking geeks anyday. /generalizing, but that's my experience anyway...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Come on guys... stop bashing lawyers!
Who are you going to call when some redneck, hick cop with a highschool equivelancy diploma and a gun and a badge does an illegal search of your apartment? You were intimadated and perhaps even threatened, now what are you going to do?
You're gonna call a lawyer.
Don't fear lawyers. Fear government agents (police officers) that think they can do whatever the hell they want because they have guns and badges and attitudes of playground bullies. The Constitution has elements that require the government (Fed, state and local) to follow certian rules. Cops can't kick your door down w/o following the proper procedures. If they do, call a lawyer and bust their ignorant, uneducated asses. Cops can be bullys. Lawyers can bully them right back.
Lawyers give us (the common people) the chance to stand-up for ourselves. Don't deride them. Be thankful they're here to help us.
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
There are plenty of sites that list bad doctors in a similar manner. This is just the checks and balances system of information pooling at work. An informational detente, so to speak.
Many doctors are good, talented and qualified docs. However, there are also a lot of doctors out there who just screw up. Now, if you're in most any other professions, it's fine to make mistakes. But not medicine.
That's because people die when you don't pay attention. For example, it's okay to forget to hit spell check if you're a student. You get a lower grade for bad spelling, but so what. Hey, you just forgot. It's not like it hurt anybody.
But it's not okay to forget to take out all the sponges and staples after surgery if that's what the protocol requires. It's not okay to forget to read the patients chart who desperately needs a certain prescription, but who doesn't get it because the doc didn't do the review. It's not okay to make stupid mistakes.
Because the bottom line is when that happens, innocent people are catastrophically injured or killed. Innocent people. When that happens, it's the doctors fault, and that doctor should pay.
It's the only avenue for the injured to seek justice.
I think the real solution to this problem is stopping BS lawsuits before they even go before a jury. To this end, I think that the US legal system should institute preliminary hearings for civil cases. In these hearings, the plaintiff would present his case and call his witnesses. The defendant would be able to cross examine the plaintiff's witnesses, but not call any of his own. The judge would then determine if the plaintiff had enough evidance to procede with his lawsuit. If he did, the lawsuit would procede with no penalty to the defendant. If, however, the plaintiff did not have enough evidance, he would have to pay the defendant's legal fees. I think this would go a long way towards reducing frivolous lawsuits of all sorts, not just malpractice suits.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Doctor-turned-engineer here. I have no personal experience with being sued for medical malpractice. My impression is that lawsuits are not triggered by the actual bad event, but by personality differences between doctors and patients.
Sick people often get sicker, and sometimes die. Many (not all) lawsuits seem to me to be caused by the fact that something bad happened, and the doctor and family didn't communicate well. What's frustrating as a doctor is that the "something bad" isn't always due to something the doctor did wrong, or could have done differently.
It seems like being a smooth talker is more important than practicing effective medicine. But I guess witch doctors have known that all along -- they don't ever seem to get sued.
Anyway, two abstracts from the New England Journal of Medicine. At least the profession monitors itself occasionally.
Volume 335:1963-1967
December 26, 1996
Relation between Negligent Adverse Events and the Outcomes of Medical-Malpractice Litigation
Troyen A. Brennan, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., Colin M. Sox, B.A., and Helen R. Burstin, M.D., M.P.H.
Background We have previously shown that in New York State the initiation of malpractice suits correlates poorly with the actual occurrence of adverse events (injuries resulting from medical treatment) and negligence. There is little information on the outcome of such lawsuits, however. To assess the ability of malpractice litigation to make accurate determinations, we studied 51 malpractice suits to identify factors that predict payment to plaintiffs.
Methods Among malpractice claims that we reviewed independently in an earlier study, we identified 51 litigated claims and followed them over a 10-year period to determine whether the malpractice insurer had closed the case. We obtained detailed summaries of the cases from the insurers and reviewed the litigation files if the outcome of a case differed from the outcome predicted in our original review.
Results Of the 51 malpractice cases, 46 had been closed as of December 31, 1995. Among these cases, 10 of 24 that we originally identified as involving no adverse event were settled for the plaintiffs (mean payment, $28,760), as were 6 of 13 cases classified as involving adverse events but no negligence (mean payment, $98,192) and 5 of 9 cases in which adverse events due to negligence were found in our assessment (mean payment, $66,944). Seven of eight claims involving permanent disability were settled for the plaintiffs (mean payment, $201,250). In a multivariate analysis, disability (permanent vs. temporary or none) was the only significant predictor of payment (P = 0.03). There was no association between the occurrence of an adverse event due to negligence (P = 0.32) or an adverse event of any type (P = 0.79) and payment.
Conclusions Among the malpractice claims we studied, the severity of the patient's disability, not the occurrence of an adverse event or an adverse event due to negligence, was predictive of payment to the plaintiff.
July 25, 1991
Relation between malpractice claims and adverse events due to negligence. Results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study III
BACKGROUND AND METHODS. By matching the medical records of a random sample of 31,429 patients hospitalized in New York State in 1984 with statewide data on medical-malpractice claims, we identified patients who had filed claims against physicians and hospitals. These results were then compared with our findings, based on a review of the same medical records, regarding the incidence of injuries to patients caused by medical management (adverse events). RESULTS. We identified 47 malpractice claims among 30,195 patients' records located on our initial visits to the hospitals, and 4 claims among 580 additional records located during follow-up visits. The overall rate of claims per discharge (weighted) was 0.13 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 0.076 to 0.18 percent). Of the 280 patients who had adverse events caused by medical negligence
In the last three months, I have picked up prescriptions at the pharmacy, only to find out twice that I had the WRONG medication.
Once it was clearly labeled wrong and the other time it was the wrong strength medicine in a correctly labeled bottle.
I recognized the difference in both cases. In my health care, I am the final barrier to a mistake being made.
So, are we saying that I should be sueing the pharmacy, even though I never took any of the wrong pills?
How about when I had my first bone marrow biopsy done? I still limp on that hip when a pressure front comes thru (10 years later). Apparently the doctor knicked something when the probe went thru. Should I have sued for that?
I got the diagnosis of cancer from that test, and they were able to save my life because of it. Was the trade of limping worth my life?
Common sense is needed here.
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
My father is a well respected doctor in my hometown. He's on the board of the Foundation For Othrodonic Research, which is the premier organization for advances in orthodontics.
.agrippa.
My father pays more in medical malpractice insurance than I made last year. He gets sued regularily by people who don't understand basic principals of taking care of their braces. For instance, one of his younger patients decided chowing down on ice cubes was a prudent thing to do. He promptly ripped off one of his braces, which then cut into his lip. His mother sued my father for malpractice.
Another case my father faced was when a teen didn't want his braces and manually removed them from his teeth. The smart lad stripped off most of the enamel on his teeth as well. My father was sued because the teen lied to his parents and only later in court was it proved my father wasn't at fault.
It's bogus cases like that drive up malpractice costs. These doctors aren't being greedy. They are trying to save their practices. It's almost no different than blacklisting spammers.
This is completely reasonable. Some patients are just way more likely to sue. With malpractice insurance costing what it costs, the doctors are just avoiding risk, and they will see fewer patients and make less money due to this.
Amazing magic tricks
the people who conduct the frivolous lawsuits against doctors who really did nothing wrong? We seem to disregard that fact that countless people who are treated with nominal injuries get it in their head that they deserve a cut because the doctor was a little rude of squeezed their hand too hard. So hence forth they get a lawyer and sue the crap outta the doctor who did NOTHING wrong. With the cost of malpractice insurance these days, it is no wonder there are more and more doctors run outta business because they cannot meet the cost to protect their own asses. Whoever said this blacklist was for those who deserved to sue?
The American Medical Association said that it had just learned of the group and that it saw no ethical issues at stake.
"There's no question that physicians are totally frustrated by the relentless assault on the medical profession by trial lawyers,"
My father-in-law is a radiologist. He's had a few suits launched against him. Is he perfect? .... no. Is he negligent? hell no!!!
Recently a chain-smoker's family (daughter) came after him (amongst others) and claims that her dad wasn't warned soon enough about his lung cancer and the risks of smoking. My father-in-law only came in on the case (medically, not litigiously speaking) later as it was. This BTW .. because cause he lost his job since they could hire a youger, less-expensive radiologist who did less prone-to-malpractice suit types of readings. He was also asked if he warned the chain-smoking dude that smoking might lead to something like lung cancer. The suit has been carried forward by one of his daughters while the rest of the family stood by embarrassed of it all. Do doctors deserve fair warning against such a patient? In my opinion, yes. Do all people who have sued and won on malpractice deserve to be 'black-listed' ... no. Do some deserve it ... I'm sure. Question is how to determine that ... ??? The only thing I can think of is full-disclosure ... on both ends!
In most cases, the insurance company & the doctor decide to settle (guilty or not) and try send everyone home as happy as is possible and without breaking everyone involved financially. That doesn't tell anything about who was or wasn't negligent. I do think however in a case that was clear negligence, the doctor needs to be yanked from the profession just like drunk drivers should have their licenses yanked until they show they are not a threat to others in that position. But we see how good we are at taking drunk-drivers off the road, right? And it appears it's not much different for negligent doctors in many cases. And let's not even start on the number of patients who take no responsibility for their own health and expect the doctor to prescribe it to them in a bottle.
It's just sickening to see America(ns) looking for someone else to blame everything on and the lawyers getting fat and rich at the continual inflow of work due to hunt down someone else on which to drop the accountability. This will continue the trend of the brightest people going where the money is ... practicing law, not into science and medicine. Where will that leave us then? With even sharper/sneakier lawyers ... great! That's just what we need isn't it!?!?!?!
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
To answer your question, yes, there is something that can be done. Certain legislations have batted around the idea of malpractice payout caps, restricting it to say nothing more than $100K. Some states, like Florida, have passed certain types of caps. If you want more info, you should check out www.medrants.com and do a search for "malpractice" -- it's a site managed by a physician. Now the problem with caps is that one state may have such an enticing package that MDs will flock to it and other states with policies less enticing to physicians will experience a "brain-drain" of sorts and will lose their health care staff. So what? you say? Well, imagine that your state is understaffed with MDs -- so that means that the ones who are practicing will be overworked. Lets face it, MDs aren't gods and so being overworked WILL lead to mistakes and mistakes may lead to lawsuits and increased payouts. Increase number of suits lead to higher malpractice insurance and the rise in cost to MDs forces many to just stop practicing or limit their practice and the vicious cycle continues (i.e. less MDs in the field, and overwork those who are practicing). If you don't believe this is happening, then you have to check out the state of healthcare in states such as West Virginia.
Now imagine how litigation will influence the minds of potential future MDs. After 4 years of med school, plus 4 years of residency, you're in the hole with around $80-100K in debt -- that's a very daunting situation to many. And if your future is questionable as to whether or not you can pay that off, you can imagine that not many will elect to go that route. Even worse, the best and brightest among them will go elsewhere in terms of their career choice and so you end up with individuals who may be less suitable to practice medicine. And so it goes back to less and less available MDs and soon the healthcare system may come to a crisis. I realize that this sounds like a doomsday situation, but the healthcare system is so wrought with problems that are so overwhelming that many lawmakers have no idea where and how to start -- some concentrate on drug costs, others concentrate on universal healthcare insurance, others talk about malpractice caps, etc. I am biased to place some of the blame on "ambulance chasers" -- there is just so much the medical profession can do to restructure and to revamp their image. But the bottom line is, MDs have been so demonized in the media in the past that their numbers may be dwindling, and where will the healthcare system be without enough of them?
Linux at home
As a patient who has been on the "wrong side" of malpractice, all I can say is that this blacklist is bullshit.
In my case, the surgeon performed the wrong procedure on me. He simply didn't read the orders correctly and screwed up.
Happily, it wasn't a kidney or leg that had to come out. But I can tell you that it put me through a lot of pain, left permanent damage, and was just a huge crappy event in my life.
Being young at the time (under 20), I was stupid and didn't sue. Should have. This guy had no real right to practice. I'd be happy if he couldn't afford his malpractice insurance. This guy shouldn't have been in the business, and it would have been good for EVERY ONE of his patients if I sued his ass off. Why anyone would want to keep this guy in the business is beyond me.
So don't tell me about doctors needing relief. I have several friends who are MDs, and they're all doing just fine and have little to complain about. Perhaps it's only the bottom feeders who have this problem.
After all, there are many lousy doctors out there. Just ask any doctor.
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.
US doctors are in it for the MONEY - not the PATIENTS. Hell, my father was part of an on-going program (begun in 1974 IIRC) at Brown University to teach 4th and 5th year med students "Balint Medicine" which is basically about developing the doctor-patient relationship - because US doctors are so poor at it.
Remember - in the litigious culture of the USA frivolous lawsuits abound - and a malpractice suit effectively destroys a doctor's livelihood.
So, you're working in an industry where you deal with sick people, and those people die. So what? People die. And if you help ease the suffering of 99.9% of them, and 0.01% are accidentally hastened to their demise - so what?
This is probably gonna cost me Karma - but I don't care: It's about time for a reality check, and that reality check is that doctors are SELDOM to blame for someone dying.
People think surgery is "safe" - but the fact is that anaesthetics is an art more than a science, and people can die simply by being anaesthetised - and IT'S NO ONE'S FAULT!
One of the strange-but-true-facts is that in New York in the 70's, when doctors went on strike for a period, the deathrate actually DROPPED.
By and large, medical misadventure is more common than negligence, and accidents happen - which is a good reason to be hospitalised in the firt place!
Health care in the USA (and in other western cultures like New Zealand, where I am from) is of a very high quality - but the big problem is that the cost of administering medicine is obscene.
Did you know that triple-heart by-pass is one of the most common surgeries in the USA? At a cost of around $50,000 (at least) for each one. Now, I don't know about you, but I think a country can't afford to practice medicine like that.
Back to the lawsuit issue: my Dad was (erroneously and mistakenly) sued for mal-practice by a stupid woman whose husband died. Needless to say, the suit failed, but I remember my Dad being more worried about that than anything else in his career which spanned nearly 40 years of general practice and university teaching.
And think about this: do you really want to be cared for by a doctor who is being consumed by worry about a pending lawsuit? No - I didn't think so.
FYI, when we lived in Rhode Island, my Dad didn't even have a full practicing certificate because his NZ qualifications were Mb.CHb, Dip. Obst., FRNZCGP, and FRCS, but because he wasn't an "MD" he could only have a "teaching certificate" where they dealth with real and simulated patients.
Anyway, the malpractice insurance for his "limited" licence was more per week than the ANNUAL malpractice insurance he had in New Zealand.
Just something to think about.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Yeah, that site wouldn't be making up or misinterperting statistics to push their own beliefs. Never.
:)
I call BS
My other car is first.
a list of doctors that have been sued. I think I would be interested in knowing if the doctor that was going to cut my chest open had been sued multiple times.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Buy a list of names of state residents and add all of them to the database, therefore rendering it useless. Or better yet, go the AMA and get a list of all doctors, and add them. Seriously, what provisions does this thing have for separating malicious data from facts? Can I go ahead and add my neighbors when they piss me off?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Very often said Good Samaritan laws have protections in them which make such a scenario impossible. If your cardiologist friend lives in MA, for example- he needs to speak with a lawyer, because he was fully protected.
I imagine even if he wasn't, its the sort of thing that wouldn't raise his insurance premiums one iota(at least not directly). Sorry, but I'm -really- tired of hearing doctors, driving $100,000 cars, living in multi-million-dollar homes, with trophy wives and 6 weeks vacation on some private island...whine about how rough it is that their insurance just costs so gosh darn much.
Ever looked at medical stats? We have shit for medical care in this country- some of the highest malpractice, fatality and complication(ie, go in for one thing, come out with something else) rates in the world; our doctors and nurses are, for the most part, completely incompetent by modern standards. Some(staph infection, for example) are simply because doctors are --too fucking lazy-- to wash their hands properly. At a DC doctor's conference on infection control, barely 1/4 of the mens room users even so much as washed their hands under running water!
Please help metamoderate.
If you owned a place would you rent to a lawyer? I surely would not.
Nope. I had one dirtbag lawyer as a tenant who caused me a bunch of trouble, screwed me out of a month's rent, and wouldn't vacate (I had sold the building and that was one of the conditions of the sale, since the buyers could tell just from talking to him what a pain in the ass he would be) until I paid him off. Kept quoting me 'laws' that either didn't exist or whose provisions he misstated. Not that I believed his lies, but he was clearly prepared to take them to court and lose just to delay the sale. He was worse than the tenants I found out were dealing drugs from my building (and there's long story of heartache in that incident). No more lawyers.
I have several lawyers for clients. The personal injury ones are all just freaking scumbags. Their main complaint that I hear over and over is that the people who get hurt and they sue on behalf of do not go to the doctor often enough, or as often as the lawyer tells them to.
Does that just not make you want to scream? I go to the doctor when I hurt or when I have a difficulty that warrants it. If I dont WANT to go to the doctor, my complaint is probably not bad enough to warrant chasing down some insurance company over.
In addition, its just all about the deep pockets. Personal Injury attorneys I have come in contact with regularly screen and only take cases where the defendant has a large insurance policy they can rape.
Chuck
- 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.
I just checked some of the numbers from NEJM myself. For the most part you are correct, but you have to be careful mixing and matching numbers from other studies.
From part I of the study:
Adverse events occurred in 3.7 percent of the hospitalizations (95 percent confidence interval, 3.2 to 4.2), and 27.6 percent of the adverse events were due to negligence (95 percent confidence interval, 22.5 to 32.6).
So if you multiply 3.7% with 27.6% you get 1.02% of all hospitalizations resulting in adverse effects that were actually due to negligence, the other 99% of adverse effects were due to something other than negligence out of control by the physician. So back to your comment, I don't see how 1% malpractice due to negligence is "fairly common," but that's a glass half-full argument, so I'll give it to you -- many people will still see 1% as "fairly common," after all, physicians see many patients and at a pure numbers standpoint 1% of all patients is a lot.
Part III of the NEJM study said:
Of the 280 patients who had adverse events caused by medical negligence as defined by the study protocol, 8 filed malpractice claims (weighted rate, 1.53 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 0 to 3.2 percent).
So that means that (1.53% times 1%) 0.0153% actually lead to malpractice claims due to negligence. Ok, so the 1.53% backs your second point, but my contention is with your third point: - of those who bring suit, only 1% are successful. I don't see those numbers anywhere in the NEJM study (granted, I only read the abstracts and not the entirety of the papers), so I can only assume you got the figure in your third point from yet another study. There is no mention whether or not that number came from cases that truly stemmed from incidents of negligence. After all you could still have say 100 cases, all of them frivolous (i.e. not a result of negligence), and still 1 successful out of them and get 1% success rate.
Linux at home
I've read so many posts on this thread blaming the evil lawyers for causing this problem. Let me break it to you, people. If the doctors weren't making mistakes and hurting people, there wouldn't be any medical malpractice lawyers.
Doctors are losing lawsuits because so many people in the jury pool know someone personally who has endured a medical error. In my family, I know of at least two. My great grandmother got a peritoneal infection because doctors left her abdomen packed with gauze after operating on her intestines. My mother was allergic to codeine, she advised her doctor of this, when the pain from cancer was too much for her to take, she asked for a pain releiver. This doctor went on to proscribe a pain reliever to her that contained codeine.
Neither my mother nor my great grandmother sued. I would have. If that means that I'd end up on some "list" for being a "troublemaker" so be it. In the end I bet I'd get better treatment because the doctors know that if they don't cross every "t" and dot every "i", I'm going to complaing. If a lack of awareness on their part causes me harm, they'll find themselves in court.
You want to fix this problem? Make it easier to revoke the medical licenses of doctors who are hurting people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
American society more and more loses so called paternalistic model based on relationship between a Teacher and student who wants to learn (or parent and son). What is coming is the "provider" model when all others do is provide a service. It makes the receiving end a customer (or even consumer) and gives him ability to demand quality and customer satisfaction from the provider, but something is lost in transaction. This "something" is a human relationship. No, they certainly keep smiling at you, but this smile is often just a socially required grimace, the mask.
You can't have both ability to sue the provider for damages and be his friend. The whole concept of "Nothing personal, it's just business" serves as a good deterrent on these patrnalistically inclined providers of the service.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
I'm a med student at a big teaching hospital in the midwest, about a month away from graduating. The malpractice situation has gotten so bad that it drives everything the doctors do, and our lives revolve around it.
I routinely get patients who tell me quite openly that they hope I, or someone else on the team, makes a mistake so that they "can get a piece of the jackpot". There are patients who come in faking symptoms because they want to get treated, or operated upon, and then sue in the hope of getting a settlement. This works because it's more expensive for a hospital or physician group to prosecute a lawsuit than to just settle up front.
Any time the slightest hint of trouble emerges, we docs have to throw everything we've got at it, without regard for probability or even common sense. Almost any new headache requires a CT scan of the head. Almost any new shortness of breath requires ultrasound imaging of the lower extremities and possibly a CT of the chest. We spend absolute fortunes on tests, procedures, and labs for people whom we know probably don't have something wrong--but we can't take the chance of missing anything, because then we'll get sued, even if we make the statistically appropriate choice.
A certain number of babies will be born every year that are not in perfect health. That's evolution at work. A certain number of people will get sick and die every year. That's the natural course of the human body. These common-sense facts are ignored by malpractice lawyers and their clients, whose greed compels them to place all blame in the world on the shoulders of doctors--and by society at large, which allows this insane situation to persist.
In the meantime, if you are wondering why you pay so much for health care--that's why. Because if we don't throw the kitchen sink at every situation, we'll get sued. (Of course, we'll get sued eventually anyway, but at least we can reduce the frequency of lawsuits by practicing defensive--i.e. expensive--medicine.)
Your attitude is one of prejudice and stereotype. You assume that every lawyer and doctor is filthy stinking rich because their profession is garunteed to make tons of money. That's like saying everyone who majored in economics in college is now a wall street hot shot, or every engineering major has a dozen patents to his name. The truth of the matter is that you have your rich and your poor professionals in any field, and it is simply ignorant to make uninformed presumptions like that. As a med student, let me fill you in on the lives that doctors live. After doing an undergraduate degree, you apply to medical school. The average debt of med school graduates is about 91K for public schools and 123K for private schools (http://www.amsa.org/meded/studentdebt.cfm). This is on top of any debt you have from undergraduate. Then, once you graduate medical school, you do your residency. The length of this residency can go from 4 - 7 years depending on which speciality you go into. Family practice has a shorter residency while surgery has a longer one. During this time, you get paid squat; 40K if you're lucky. Enough to live on in theory but at this point you're potentially 200K in debt already, and you aren't making nearly enough to pay this off during residency, so all most people can do is to just get a forebearance and let it accumulate interest. Compound this with the fact that you graduate medical school at age 26 if you're a traditional student who started straight out of college (a good percantage have a few years between undergrad and med school), so you could easily be married and have a family develop during your residency so there's another drain on your salary. Once you finish your residency, your salary goes up, but it's not instant money. Primary care physicians (internists, family doctors, etc) are on the low end of pay, though they typically have shorter residencies. Specialities like cardiac surgery have more salary, but insanely long residencies (surgical specialities have a long residency followed by fellowship and more crap then you want to deal with). Because the financial security of medicine is so much less than it used to be in the 60's and 70's, you have more people going into specialities than primary care becaus the money is better there, leading to increasingly critical shortages in many fields. So medicine is not a money tree that you can shake. Doctors, lawers, and yes even pro athletes are not rolling in dough. Not ever athlete gets the noteriety as A-Rod. There are many NHL players who barely peak the 100K mark, and major league soccer players are lucky to even get that high.
If you want to get technical, you add the milk to the espresso. And I'm fairly confident that the milk is hotter, having been burnt by both. The finished drink should be at a minimum of 170 degrees after you are done fiddling with syrups and toppings and shit, so the milk needs to be around 190, especially if you are doing a caramel macchiato or some similarly syrup laden beverage. Soy milk is an exception as it burns more readily than regular milk - do not order soy mochas with flavored syrups as the temperature required of the soy to melt the syrup produces a lovely burnt flavor nauseatingly masked by all the sugar.
Sure, the water in the espresso machine is scalding, and the espresso dripping from it is pretty hot too. But in the little cup that catches it, it cools very quickly. This is why the milk must be added to it as soon as possible. The end beverage product will vary from 160 to 180ish, with somewhere around 175 being a nice ideal. When you are making 5 drinks in a little under two minutes, for an hour and a half straight, this is hard to achieve in practice. Other complications involve children's beverages, which are served at much lower heat (usu. 140 max) and beverages served at higher heat, such as hot apple cider and americanos.
An americano is what you get when you add 190 degree water to espresso. It is the Italian approximation of American coffee.
As I have been employed at a McDonald's franchise after the disputed, I will simply say that if they lowered the hold temperature of the coffee then it was a damn good thing they did so, as it was at least 185 degrees at "my" store in CA. The water used to make the coffee was abominably hot. We had to use it to make hot tea for people. The teabags come in a paper wrapper with golden arches on them, so I was never tempted to try the tea. The water itself was comfortably above boiling. It burnt me worse than the fry oil ever did.
Coffee has a higher boiling point than plain old water, which means that you may not necessarily be aware that what you think is hot coffee is actually a nuclear furnace in an insulated bunker.
I will go far as to say that I believe that if the woman in question was burnt as badly as she claims and McDonald's would not cover her hospital bills and she sued McD for the purposes of paying her medical expenses, then her lawsuit was not frivolous, given my bias that nobody should be peddling a substance capable of that level of tissue damage for the specific purpose of ingestion into one's vulnerable oral orifice.
Twist Tricks,
Arek Rashan
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 see several posts for people defending Doctor's on this board. Doctors lose lawsuits where they did nothing wrong. Patients sue every chance they get. Doctors will make mistakes, get used to it... blah blah blah.
Malpractice lawsuits would not be so lucrative if there were not egregious errors being made. Have you heard of Doctors amputating the wrong limbs? Have you heard of Doctors prescribing medication that patients were alergic to? My own wife's OB prescribed her BIRTH CONTROL accidentally when she was 5 months pregnant! (Thank goodness I asked the pharmacist for instructions when I picked up her perscription!)
Doctors make mistakes, yes. Many Doctors get sued for small mistakes that cause little harm, yes. But there is no clear place to draw the line. When I deploy software, we go through every possible scenario to insure a smooth deployment. We even further our efforts when it's a key deployment either for a large amount of end users, for an important end user community, or for a big dollar client we're afraid of pissing off. When you are dealing with human life, similar efforts should be made. When you prescribe potentially lethal medication, a certain amount of double checking is in order. When you have a patient cut open, it stands to reason that you will count your instruments before and after the procedure to make sure nothing is left inside. It stands to reason that you would check the open body cavity for any contaminants before re-sealing it. Doctors become complacent in their day to day jobs and that simply is not acceptable. The only thing to keep them in check is the potential of a malpractice lawsuit.
Frankly, I'd rather be on the list then off of it. At least then, I would be sure that a certain amount of effort would be made to ensure that I would not sue.
I just looked up the hospital my father works at. Its a non-profit suburban hospital in one of the wealthiest areas of the country. It has a 5 star rating for Obstetrics and has a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit which among other things requires an OBGYN to be on the premises 24/7/365. The complication rate for Obstetrics at this relative jem of a hospital is still 10% and that means that there are literally over 1300 events that do not go as well as hoped in that one specialty in that one hospital. And the premiums keep going up. Granted part of the reason that the complication rate is that high is because so many high-risk pregancies go there because of the resources avaialable.
s ea ction=mod&modtype=HRC&modact=HRC_profile&HGID=HGST BD757767210057
http://www.healthgrades.com/public/index.cfm?fu
So, where in the constitution does it say everyone has a right to force doctors to treat them? Is it right under the line that says that doctors have no rights and must be forced to use their 6+ years of intensive training whenever anyone asks, even if that person is doctor shopping or has a history of multiple lawsuits?
Exactly who's "rights" does this database infringe upon? How is it any different than similiar databases set up in states like New York that list all doctors, their certifications, where they trained, and if they've been sued or not? Oh yea, THAT's OK, because it's easy to shit on doctors because we can always sue them if they gripe about it.
Because of this, few years back, the patience insurance in Finland was renowated in such way that patients can get compensated for malpractices and complications that occur during their care without any actual wrong doing by the doctor being proved.
Of course, if doctors do things intentionally wrong or are criminally neglicent, they can be held responsible in the courts, but this rarely happens.
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
First, you manage to put in place one of the strongest medical academic infrastructures on earth, with some of the best doctors around.
Then you develop this attitude where nobody cares about damn anything except for himself, his privacy and his own pocket. As mentalities break barriers of race, religion, neighborhood or whatever else, doctors, pharmacists, nurses and other medical staff are not immune.
Then you give a whole new meaning to the word "Sue" by building a whole industry around suing sidewalk engineers after you slipped on a bannana. A law industry that promptly regards the end-user's responsibility, whatever the case may be as sheer ZERO.
On top of that, you build a bizzare insurance industry that capitalizes on 2 things:
1. Punishing the MAJORITY of the doctors for the stupid mistakes that those [few] who don't give a damn, are stupid, or are just plain human do.
2. Punishing the MAJORITY of the public for the greedy, senseless, I-did-something-stupid-so-gimme-yer-money-lawsuit filing assholes.
If you polarize the world enough, you'd have two very extreme possibilities:
1. You will have doctors that make mistakes but mostly do their job and make your life better
or
2. Unless you're so rich you don't bother counting smaller-than-5-figures-sums-of-money, you have either very expensive or very inexperienced doctors at your disposal, which make just SLIGHTLY LESS mistakes, and which pay you (probbably less than you overpay in the first place) if they DO make a mistake.
So collectively (by not using your electoral power to limit the damage which both dope-smoking-doctors and trigger-happy-lawsuiters can do), you're kicking your best doctors, your healthcare and your own tax-paying public [read: yourself] in the teeth, in the name of those who got hurt by one of the aforementioned parties for the benefit of some lawyers and insurance agents.
I'm not anti-American, I really respect America for its good sides, but as an outsider, I'm looking at how you all collectively screw each other over, and as objective as I can or cannot be, you're dumb.
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Geez, chill. It's just some doctors fighting back against the criminally insane legal system.
You know, some people would prefer to spend more time actually doing the line of work they chose than in court. Doctors are among the most-often sued professionals, and the majority of cases don't have anything even resembling credibility.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There was a bit of a brouhaha about this a while ago, when patients got the right to see their own records.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
"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/
I'm a surgeon, and I hapened to ask my graduating medschool class (this was 7 years ago) what they would do if they won the lottery. About 90% said they would continue to practice medicine, only 2 guys said they would quit medicine. I don't think my school is an anomaly either
As far as the NYC doctor strike in the 1970s. All the sick people went elsewhere (NJ, Conn, etc), so of course if you remove the sick people the death rate will go down.
..........FULL STOP.
Fascinating reading the threads here. Threads saying: - lawyers are greedy. - doctors are greedy. - people in accidents are greedy. - insurance companies are greedy. Most likely, there are lots of greedy and good people from all groups. The US needs to work on all of them, not blame one group. Establish some common sense laws about doctor's culpability. Establish penalties and court-cost rules to discourage frivolous lawsuits while offering small help to genuine cases. etc........
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
If physicians were better at doing their jobs, fewer of them would be sued. I hear of too many cases of incompetents who will not listen to patients, have their mindset on what they think is wrong rather than on treating the patient's illness, and presuming the patient has no idea what they are talking about AND is not worth listening to.
There is one good reason: a doctor who doesn't make negligent errors amounting to incompetence and is open with their patients is not going to get sued. A lawyer who is not getting anything from the patient is not going to spend a fortune out of his own pocket to gather evidence and try a case that doesn't have a reasonable chance that they could win.
You have it backward, it would mean that 20% of the time doctors were wrong. The plaintiff is the person suing, not the doctor.
It is extremely hard to sue a doctor and win, first because doctors tend to maintain a "code of silence" where doctors simply will not go into court and report on another doctor's incompetence, (1) because they don't want to lose (lucrative) referrals from other doctors and (2) because their own insurance carrier might raise their rates or cancel them in retaliation. If a lawyer cannot find an expert witness - which would have to be another doctor - to show incompetence he can't possibly sue and win. (Unless it's "res ipso loquitor" ("the thing speaks for itself") class incompetence, i.e. x-ray before operation shows area where operation is being performed, x-ray after shows same area plus a clamp that wasn't there before and isn't supposed to be there.)
Second, the standard contituting "malpractice" is more than error, more than even mistake, more than negligence, but almost incompetence. If this class of standard were used in automobile accidents, the only time your insurance company would have to pay anything is if you were not only negligent in hitting someone but were drunk at the time.
If a doctor makes a mistake in diagnosis, but it's reasonable given the circumstances, that is not malpractice even if the patient is injured or killed as a result, and even though it's a result of an error on the part of the doctor.
If I drive a vehicle I'm not familiar with and in making a turn in a parking lot, I nick another car, that's negligence and I'm liable. In the same circumstances of a doctor trying a new procedure and making a mistake, even if it kills the patient that is most likely less than the threshhold necessary to collect for malpractice.
Maybe some of it has to go to lawyers if it's the only way to get healthcare that isn't the result of negligent incompetence.
That database is not available to the general public. It's primarily for the licensing authorities, malpractice insurers, possibly for some hospitals, but no access under any circumstances for you and me as patients at all.
A lawyer who is working on a contingency fee is not going
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I'd have to say stopping at accidents is a dicey business at best. If you don't have the tools/training, you might be hurting more than helping.
Disclaimer: I'm an ER doc, and I've got about every certification you can shake a stick at... BLS, ACLS, ATLS, Pediatric ALS, etc, etc... in addition to experience rendering care under fire as a tactical medic. I'm comfortable rendering care in the field, partially from my training, but also because EMS direction is part and parcel of EM practice. I also carry my jump bag in my vehicle, so I've got advanced airway management, hemorrhage control, monitoring capability... all in a backpack.
I stop at traffic accidents if they happen right in front of me, or if there is no EMS on scene. However, I would not expect a radiologist to stop (in fact, I'd almost hope he wouldn't... he'd probably just be in the way). If somebody is really FUBAR'd and needs me to stay with them, I stay until they're in qualified hands (that may mean a ride to the hospital)... otherwise, I immediately hand off to the medics and leave.
Having a medical license doesn't mean you're qualified to offer care in the field. For my own part, if I was laying bleeding in the road somewhere, I'd rather have a paramedic (or maybe a surgeon) than some of my colleagues. I don't mean that as an insult to other doctors... but care in austere environments is very different from the office... it's simply not within the scope of most physicians' practice or experience.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.