You always knew it could happen. Statistically, you knew it WOULD happen sometime in your career. Now there’s a registered letter on your desk, from a law office, and you’re afraid to open it. You summon up the courage to read it, and find that a patient you’ve done your best for has decided to sue. As far as you recall, there wasn’t even a bad outcome, but you must’ve missed something, because there’s this letter on your desk informing you that they’ve been retained by your patient, and requiring records as part of their fact-finding. Now what?
Jeffrey Segal, MD, JD
Hey, Doc! Here’s The Cure For What Ails Ya!
When people ask how things are going, it’s most often a polite habit, a rhetorical question. When a physician asks a patient that same question, they really do want and need to know. After all, how can a doctor diagnose and treat and cure anyone if they don’t know what’s wrong? It’s generally easier, more accurate and more efficient for the patient to provide the complaint. How can the doctor know what to fix if the patient doesn’t say what’s bothering?
It’s said that the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient. In this circumstance, though, we really don’t have much of a choice. But that doesn’t change the diagnostic method a bit. We still have to know what’s wrong with our healthcare system before we can fix it. “Fool for a patient” or not, we’re still the only ones that can do the job. So let’s go ahead and ask the question. How are you doing? What are your complaints? What ails ya?
Dr. Jeff Segal published in “Health Reform Report”
Dr. Segal’s article, “Doctor-to-Doctor: The Administration Promises “Budget Dust” To Fix Medical Malpractice Morass” was just published by the Center for Health Transformation’s Health Reform Report. Read the article here.
Litigation Promotes Patient Safety – Are You Kidding?
Recently, a defense attorney hosted Malpractice 101 on the physician social networking site, sermo.com. A multitude of questions were answered.
Sprinkled in the answers was the conclusion the tort system has a number of salutary effects – namely patient safety. The moderator recited the (now stale) observation from the 1980’s. To paraphrase: Anesthesiologists embraced pulse oximetry because their med mal premiums were too high. They identified the source of high premiums – anoxic injuries and deaths, and crafted a solution. Pulse oximetry. Once embraced, their ORs became safer, and premiums went down.
While I will not quibble that pulse oximetry is a good thing, (it is), I would argue it was a basic innovation that was embraced by the profession, irrespective of premium cost. Here’s why.
Medical Justice on ReachMD
Medical Justice CEO, Dr. Jeff Segal, was recently featured on the ReachMD radio program “Preventing Frivolous Lawsuits and Frivolous Testimony,” hosted by Shane Jackson, Executive Vice President of Jackson Healthcare/President, LocumTenens.com. Dr. Segal shared his experience of being sued, and his expertise in the areas of defensive medicine, frivolous lawsuits, frivolous testimony, and non-legislative solutions … Read more
Healthcare Reform – A Duty To Patients, A Call To Arms
Being a physician, one’s first duty is to one’s patients. When Congress passed the healthcare reform bills, more than a few of us were doubtful that this was going to help. Many more felt there were far better possible solutions to be found. Few felt the entire 500+ seats of Congress should have taken an entire year to come up with that legislation. But when it passed, we hoped for the best, and figured it could always be changed before it went into full effect. That last may be the best idea in the whole stew.
Flawed Malpractice Insurance Profiling Affects 22% of Physicians
Medical Malpractice Insurance companies, employing a two-tier system to pigeonhole doctors by costs, have been demonstrated to inaccurately classify those physicians 22% of the time. (Rand Corp. Report, New England Journal of Medicine.)
“Consumers, physicians, and purchasers are all at risk of being misled by the results produced by these tools,” concluded the researchers who analyzed aggregated claims data for 2004 and 2005 from four Massachusetts insurance companies. Using “commercial software,” they looked at data from 12,789 physicians in 10 specialties and constructed “homogeneous episodes of care” to create cost profiles for healthcare episodes such as treatments for diabetes, heart attack or urinary tract infection.
Look Who’s Getting a Tax Break: Plaintiff’s Attorneys
The Treasury Department is rumored to be on the verge of reversing a long-standing policy which did not help personal injury attorneys. The status quo: litigation expenses in contingency agreements are not deductible. Litigation expenses in contingency agreements are considered loans advanced to the plaintiff. Of course, if the plaintiff loses, the loan is not … Read more
And THEN they said…
The past couple of years have been full of promises. There was going to be health care reform, universal coverage, coverage for those who have pre-existing conditions, a sincere attempt to reduce the obscene cost of health care… the list goes on and on. So far, unfortunately, the bottom line is actually a step or three backwards.
Yes, Congress did pass what they CALLED healthcare reform. But it didn’t have one word in it about tort reform. To make matters worse, several states’ supreme courts are now hearing cases that claim that caps on awards are unConstitutional. To make matters worse yet, those cases are winning. At least some of that is because judges don’t like being told what they can or cannot do/award, even if the caps are reasonable. So even when a state makes a tort reform law, the System seems bound and determined to override it.
Why Should We Care About Caps?
All across the nation, states are pushing cases that challenge the sanity of tort reform laws. In states where tort reform has been enacted, cases are making their way up through to that state’s Supreme Court, complaining that the law against maximum awards (caps) on pain and suffering are either insufficient, or shouldn’t exist at all. Some judges seem to side with the plaintiffs — not because they think the plaintiffs are necessarily getting an unfair verdict, but because they don’t like laws that limit their autonomy. Some might claim this is legislating from the bench as well. In the bigger picture, the awards themselves aren’t what’s putting a stranglehold on the medical profession. In a practical world, then, why should we care?
