The Denver Post is running a two part series on Colorado's Board of Medical Examiners (Buried mistakes / Prescription for conflict). Part one was yesterday, part two is today. It addresses the sealed door policy of Colorado's Board of Medical Examiners and the negative consumer effects when compared to other states with more public access to board business.
To be up front with my bias: The ordeal of my wife and I is included as part of this series.
Prior to the unfortunate events surrounding the botched misdiagnosis of my wife's condition, I was a "trust your doctor" kind a guy. I expect the proverbial used car salesperson to have anything but my interests in mind, and so I adjust accordingly - caveat emptor - and do my research, ask questions, get it in writing, etc. With my doctor, however, I trusted them explicitly and implicitly. This trust was essential because I don't have the resources (time and money) to acquire a medical degree in order to accurately evaluate my current medical needs.
My trust was based on an outdated perception that every doctor would "Do No Harm" in the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath. In our case, the doctor effectively destroyed this trust. It took several years to rebuild this trust with several excellent physicians. To get there, we had to education ourselves. In the past 9 years, we have read tens of thousands of pages from medical books and journals. We have a medical library to rival any first year medical resident. All this so we could put ourselves in the position to 1) ask intelligent questions and 2) know when we were getting an intelligent answer. It's a sobering experience to be informed enough to ask treatment option questions of a doctor - a specialist and expert, no less - only to be told the photocopied JAMA article you hold in your hands doesn't exist!
The principle problem with medical doctors, in general, is 1) debilitating levels of arrogance and 2) greed. Medical doctors, in general, are far more interested in protecting income, maintaining monopoly of "treating" all things biological and establishing legislative immunity to their actions. Colorado's doctor friendly legislature passed the "Doctor Apology Bill", C.R.S. 13-25-135, last July. So now, not only it the process of the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners sealed from public view, but if the doctor apologizes to you or your family about the fact they just amputated the wrong leg, it is inadmissible in court against him! Just who the **** does this serve? Certainly not me, the consumer. But it is the feel-good-bill of the decade for medical doctors.
In the past 9 years, I have come to acquire a level of medical knowledge and understanding that has allow me to embarrass a number of doctors. I truly wish this wasn't so, but when it concerns the health of my family, I care squat about some doctors puny ego. As a result, we have flat out fired a number of doctors and pursued third and fourth opinions (variance of opinions is a whole separate and frightening subject). It's nauseating to see any adult toss a tantrum, it's especially revolting to see a medical doctor hiss and froth when you fire them.
As of today, we have assembled an excellent team of medical doctors who have each, by virtue of their character, helped us regain our trust in medical doctors. Finding these physicians capable of practicing Medicine (with a big "M") has been the result of applying a very simple set of criteria each must meet to be considered capable of treating my family:
1) Can they say the words "I don't know." Had my wife's first doctor, the one who botch the diagnosis, be able to says these words, we would have found the proper treatment MUCH sooner and we would have never considered a law suit. Even on the stand, this doctor COULD NOT acknowledge that there were things she didn't know. Colossal arrogance.
Slashdot Mirror
I did the same for my Todo list. It's an installable application to the Web Application Gateway (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wagateway/ (GPL).
The Denver Post is running a two part series on Colorado's Board of Medical Examiners (Buried mistakes / Prescription for conflict). Part one was yesterday, part two is today. It addresses the sealed door policy of Colorado's Board of Medical Examiners and the negative consumer effects when compared to other states with more public access to board business.
To be up front with my bias: The ordeal of my wife and I is included as part of this series.
Prior to the unfortunate events surrounding the botched misdiagnosis of my wife's condition, I was a "trust your doctor" kind a guy. I expect the proverbial used car salesperson to have anything but my interests in mind, and so I adjust accordingly - caveat emptor - and do my research, ask questions, get it in writing, etc. With my doctor, however, I trusted them explicitly and implicitly. This trust was essential because I don't have the resources (time and money) to acquire a medical degree in order to accurately evaluate my current medical needs.
My trust was based on an outdated perception that every doctor would "Do No Harm" in the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath. In our case, the doctor effectively destroyed this trust. It took several years to rebuild this trust with several excellent physicians. To get there, we had to education ourselves. In the past 9 years, we have read tens of thousands of pages from medical books and journals. We have a medical library to rival any first year medical resident. All this so we could put ourselves in the position to 1) ask intelligent questions and 2) know when we were getting an intelligent answer. It's a sobering experience to be informed enough to ask treatment option questions of a doctor - a specialist and expert, no less - only to be told the photocopied JAMA article you hold in your hands doesn't exist!
The principle problem with medical doctors, in general, is 1) debilitating levels of arrogance and 2) greed. Medical doctors, in general, are far more interested in protecting income, maintaining monopoly of "treating" all things biological and establishing legislative immunity to their actions. Colorado's doctor friendly legislature passed the "Doctor Apology Bill", C.R.S. 13-25-135, last July. So now, not only it the process of the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners sealed from public view, but if the doctor apologizes to you or your family about the fact they just amputated the wrong leg, it is inadmissible in court against him! Just who the **** does this serve? Certainly not me, the consumer. But it is the feel-good-bill of the decade for medical doctors.
In the past 9 years, I have come to acquire a level of medical knowledge and understanding that has allow me to embarrass a number of doctors. I truly wish this wasn't so, but when it concerns the health of my family, I care squat about some doctors puny ego. As a result, we have flat out fired a number of doctors and pursued third and fourth opinions (variance of opinions is a whole separate and frightening subject). It's nauseating to see any adult toss a tantrum, it's especially revolting to see a medical doctor hiss and froth when you fire them.
As of today, we have assembled an excellent team of medical doctors who have each, by virtue of their character, helped us regain our trust in medical doctors. Finding these physicians capable of practicing Medicine (with a big "M") has been the result of applying a very simple set of criteria each must meet to be considered capable of treating my family:
1) Can they say the words "I don't know." Had my wife's first doctor, the one who botch the diagnosis, be able to says these words, we would have found the proper treatment MUCH sooner and we would have never considered a law suit. Even on the stand, this doctor COULD NOT acknowledge that there were things she didn't know. Colossal arrogance.
2) Can I call them by their first name.
The rest we can discover together.