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Doctors Sue Patients for Online Complaints
Carl Bialik writes "'Several Web sites have sprung up that encourage patients to post anonymous reviews of doctors and dentists. Some frustrated patients have even created entire Web sites to criticize specific physicians. The Wall Street Journal Online is reporting that some doctors are, in turn, defending their reputation by suing the online critics."
Awww, they should toughen up. Spending time posting on Slashdot should help out with that as no interesting or informative post here goes without some sort of pain.
Seriously though, if the patients are reporting on their experience, then that is not slander. Just stick to the facts and they should be fine. However, when you start crossing the line into statements that cannot be substantiated, then that is dangerous water. It is of course important to have resources like Slashdot where comments past a certain date cannot be modified. They become a part of the historical record that documents both protection for and against issues of speech.
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Doctors are already a protected class of citizens, who have enormous power over the average person. They've got sanctioned monopoly powers, have a huge amount of leeway in treatment quality, and generally don't come close to the quality of service that they did a generation ago.
It is in everyone person's right to criticize bad service, and the threat of libel lawsuits should not be as powerful. When you have a State-sanctioned power to treat others, it shouldn't stop you from giving your best, especially in life or death situations.
I have a great doctor who has been retired for probably 15 years. He's old school and treats me and my family with respect and friendliness. He's available 24/7 by phone (home, office, cell, pager) and he's called me back at bizarre times when I've had problems. All my friends are blown away by the stories I have of his service.
I've been to other doctors and wish I had the time to complain. Dirty exam rooms, gossiping about other patients, staff that works more like DMV workers than health professionals.
I guess these people should just shut up and take what the State spoonfeeds them. Just wait until we have Nationalized Healthcare if you really want to see things get worse.
The American Dental Associations is no better.
First Amendment restrictions on our Federal and State governments should be re-visited. "No law" means no law. Especially when a doctor is free to blog their side of the story. I'm not sure why it is in anyone's power to curb the speech of others on a private or public forum.
It wasn't that long ago that there was a big stink over a doctor-run web site that blacklisted malpractice plaintiffs so that doctors could deny them future coverage, regardless of who won the case. Google cached link I guess it's not so funny when someone does it to them.
I didnt know there was anyhting illegal about posting on ones experience. If a patient does not post false information and made up facts about the person and it is all just their opinion then these Doctors have a moot argument.
GL HF!
Your point is taken, but libel is not and never was protected speech. The fact that the doctor sued under libel indicates that the claims were false or misrepresented. If the were in fact true, the doctor would gain nothing by bringing the case other than proving the claims were indeed true.
For an average of $300 per year, just about anyone can get Umbrella Liability Insurance. Such insurance shields you from many things including slander and libel claims.
That way, the evil corporation or incompetent doctor that wants to shut you up with a frivilous lawsuit will really be suing your multi-billion dollar insurance company. $1 Million worth of coverage is typically around $300 per year. Multi-million policies are frequently available for not much more.
I'm a big tall mofo.
The reason the doctors' are suing is this: true, you do have free speech, but you have to be responsible with it. If you slander (I guess in this case it would be libel) someone, they have the right to sue you. You would need to have disclaimers galour on the web-sites and all sorts of legal rhetoric to protect your backside. Case in point is the site bestbuysux.org. He has been sued a couple of times and has had to reorganize content and post disclaimers.
As long as you act responsiblly and have your backside covered you're good. If you make you make everything look legit but it is really just a flame page because you don't like someone's bedside manner; well, someone with their career on the line may just come after you.
I eat Karma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's why I don't have any.
The defendant may plead and establish the truth of the statements as a defense.
This is just unfair. Look at it this way: what if it were your career? If you work a service job, what if managers from companies worldwide in your industry started manager forums to talk about your performance and possibilies for hiring. Its way too unreliable. If you work a professional job at a desk-- same deal. And if you're a manager, what if clients all started forum-ing about your business? Plus, is there any check for truth in comments? Perhaps I'm just a malignant troublemaker and decide one afternoon that it would be fun to ruin the career of a respectable practicing doctor. Is phone calling and talking too slow? The old heard-from-my-friend-he's-bad [or good] seems fine to me. Phone calling and gossip are tried and trued methods.
Can someone please explain to me how this is any different than someone posting a bad review for a book on, say Amazon.com? Or is it that Amazon does in fact receive subpeonas to remove those reviews that can be categorized as libel or slanderous and we, the public, don't hear about it?
It's bound to come up, so let me head this question off at the pass:
Q: Why don't the physicians post their side of the story and let the public decide who is more correct?
A: The docs cannot simply post their side of the story on a patient's blog in response to the complaints. HIPAA's privacy provisions generally prevent physicians and their staff from doing so.
In the court of public opinion, only patients have a voice. It's little wonder that some docs might choose to reply via the official court system, because they have no other recourse.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
This practice was apparently pioneered by the Clinton administration, after he was embarrassed on a number of occassions by protestors.
I'm not saying that it's a defensible practice. I'm just pointing out that the precedent was set before (the junior) Bush was elected.
I wrote an Amazon.com book review for a programming book that was less than flattering. I posted the review under my real name.
The author of the book Googled me, found my email address and then contact me to complain. I found that a little strange.
Answer: "They're fucked."
I think it's really shitty that the average person can't go and check ratings of healthcare workers and institutions. Believe me, a lot of shit isn't reported. A lot of incompetence is hidden. And unless the AMA starts weeding docs better, the only recourse the average Joe has is to gamble with his health and sue if need be.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Generally negligence is excluded. This means that if you consciously or unconsciously lied, they can deny coverage.
Simplified, negligence is when you do something wrong. Gross negligence is *knowingly* doing something wrong.
Umbrella liability is not a license to be an asshole. It's frankly not worth it in my view. It makes you a target since you now have deep pockets. First thing a lawyer is going to want to know is the policy limits on the target of a lawsuit. If he/she hears about an umbrella policy, they'll be gunning for the whole amount.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
My wife schedules each patient a reasonable amount of time for the problem that they're calling to see her about. On occasion, some of those problems turn out to be more complex and urgent than they expressed over the phone.
On occasion? Well, your wife is a much more considerate doctor than any I've ever seen, then. Every doctor I've ever been to is always running late unless I'm one of the first appointments of the day (which is what I try to arrange, actually).
The cause is obvious, and related to what you said, but you didn't take it far enough. You say your wife tries to schedule a "reasonable" amount of time. Since it's obviously impossible to estimate the amount of time each patient visit will take with 100% accuracy, the best she can do is to pick times that average out to be correct, that is, to schedule appointments so that roughly 50% of the patients require less than the allotted time and roughly 50% require more.
The first problem is, that does not work. Without getting into the math, it's very simple to prove with basic queueing theory that, assuming a normal distribution of error, she'll be behind schedule more than 50% of the time. The only way to ensure that, most of the time, patients *don't* have to wait is to systematically overestimate the time required per-patient.
The second problem is that if a doctor were to systematically overestimate patient treatment times, and schedule accordingly, statistics guarantee that the doctor will have a fair amount of down time between patients, most of the time. It's those bits of down time that provide the slack needed to catch up when even the overly generous estimate turns out to be inadequate.
Now, I think that would be the considerate way to run the business. Estimate in 15-minute increments, schedule in 20-minute increments, and plan on having time to read a journal for a few minutes after each appointment. But I've never yet met a doctor who does this. Why? Money. Downtime between patients means fewer patients in a day and that means a lower income.
Going back to the theory, if the doctor's goal is to optimize his/her time and income, not the patients' time and convenience, then the best thing to do is to ensure that there is never any slack. The doctor can still schedule "reasonable" times, but should make sure to schedule a few patients in very quick succession early in the day, so that the waiting room is never empty. It's to the doctor's benefit to be running behind schedule, because that way there's never any dead time. A little mathematics could probably even work out the minimum number of patients that should be waiting, on average, to guarantee a given (low) probability of dead time.
This is what happens in every case I've seen. They don't actually do it by scheduling three patients at five-minute intervals for 15-minute appointments first thing in the morning, but instead they systematically underestimate the appointment durations, then throw in the occasional empty block later in the day to prevent the backlog from getting too deep. The net effect is the same... they're perpetually behind and therefore perpetually busy, at the expense of their patients, who almost always have a long wait.
I think the best solution is a combination of slightly more conservative estimates in scheduling (accepting that it will mean a little dead time and a couple less patients per day) and communication. Determine a target maximum waiting time and if you get far enough behind to begin approaching it, start notifying patients that they should arrive a few minutes later for their appointments, and even ask each of them if they would prefer to reschedule for another day, which will open up a block of time to absorb the delay.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
They had a fan site for a local shopping mall. The mall developers tried to shut them down (for some inexplicable reason), so as part of defending themselves they registered several "sucks" domains including http://www.taubmansucks.com/ (Taubman is the name of the developer).
/. my hits from them are higher than normal :)
The guy was trying to defend himself for a long time and started to get dug into a hole, but eventually he found pro-bono representation and ultimately they won. Maybe there's some useful ideas for you in there.
Yup. I've done lots of research about gripe sites because of that C&D.
On a side note someone at farmers reads
-nB
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Heck, if it's simple, I can go to a pharmacist and get something for a headcold. I want a doctor who'll catch that cancer one visit earlier or run that extra test to rule out a possibly fatal disease, or know that there's a better drug for me than the one he used to prescribe.
The best possible option is to get a middle-late career doctor who also teaches and works at a good medical school/research hospital. They have to keep up with the latest and greatest and have the experience to evaluate the material.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White