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.
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.
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
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?
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?
Although I acknowledge that there are good reasons for suing a doctor, most of them are not. Doctors are human, they're doing the best they can.
If a treatment has a 80% chance of working, and 5% chance of killing you is it a mistake to recommend it? What if you'd die anyways, just 5 years down the road? You'd have 80% chance at life. I think most of us would agree that it's not a mistake to try it. If a patient dies because of that treatment - was it a mistake? I could see only one problem - that's if/when the doctor did not explain the odds/risks.
I see way too many people suing because they need to be protected from themselves.
Do you know what that part means?
if malpractice is real, the lifetime 'costs' of taking care of the incident is covered, plus a maximum of 250k for pain and suffering..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Kill the lawyers and the problem goes away.
And they lived happily ever after..
Truth is, while there are scum lawyers, there are also lawyers protecting our rights, EFF and every other non-profit group has lawyers.
I'd rather see some reform, but can you imagine the lawyers on that aspect.
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
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.
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.
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.'
For programs that do not work.
If a programmer was contracted to write software that affects your *health* and they botched it, then yes, they should be held accountable in a civil court of law.
0. Doctor performs inappropriate care.
Need a Catering Connection
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
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.
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.
Yeah, it's sad that 99% of lawyers can make the rest look so bad.
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.
>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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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!"
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!
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
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
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.
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
In one of the cases listed, the hospital knew the doctor was dependent on painkillers and still let him operate. Would you have him operate on you because this system meant someone decided it wasn't worth the risk to sue or complain about him?
It's different, because a doctor can easily cause significantly harm to you if he's incompetent or not doing his job right.
If the database only returned information about people who have sued and LOST several times, it would have been less of a problem. As it stands, it's a danger to public health.
"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/