Healthcare Reform

Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS

A recent study in New England Journal Medicine shed light on the frequency of litigation against doctors. For high risk specialties, such as neurosurgeons and cardiothoracic surgeons, the annual rate approached 20% a year. For general surgeons, the rate was 15% per year; for plastic surgery, the rate was 13% per year.

The same study noted that plaintiffs received an award in only 1 of 5 cases.

A more recent study in the Journal of American College of Surgeons examined the effect this litigation had on surgeons.

Seven thousand surgeons (29%) in the professional society returned surveys.

Involvement in a recent malpractice suit was reported by 24.6% responding surgeons. Surgeons involved in a recent malpractice suit were younger, worked longer hours, had more night call, and were more likely to be in private practice.

Read more

Michael Kirsch, M.D. – author, MD Whistleblower

With regard to physicians’ support for medical malpractice reform, the times they are a changin’. These iconic words of Bob Dylan, who has now reached the 8th decade of life, apply to the medical liability crisis that traditionally has been a unifying issue for physicians.

The New York Times reported that physicians in Maine are going soft on this issue, but I suspect this conversion is not limited to the Pine Tree State. Heretofore, it was assumed that physicians as a group loathed the medical malpractice system and demanded tort reform. The system, we argued, was unfair, arbitrary, and expensive. It missed most cases of true medical negligence. It lit the fuse that exploded the practice of defensive medicine. Rising premiums drove good doctors out of town or out of practice.

What happened? The medical malpractice system is as unfair as ever. Tort reform proposals are still regarded as experimental by the reigning Democrats in congress and in the White House. The reason that this issue has slipped in priority for physicians is because our jobs have changed.

Read more

Michael J. Sacopulos, Esq.

Earlier this year, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released “The Social Life of Health Information, 2011.” The study was based upon telephone surveys conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Although the full report is approximately forty five pages in length, here are some interesting highlights:

Read more

Michael J. Sacopulos, Esq.

Several months ago the South Carolina Appellate Court issued a scary opinion (Burke V. AnMed Health). A standard medical malpractice case had come before a trial court in South Carolina. Prior to trial, the defense attorney asked that prospective jurors who owed bad debts and judgments to the healthcare provider be excluded from the jury. The trial court Judge did exclude several potential jurors who had judgments against them by the healthcare provider, but the Judge refused to excuse several jurors who owed debts to the medical provider. One $250,000 judgment later, the defendant appealed the matter to the South Carolina Court of Appeals.

Read more

Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the growing number of scientific papers that are being retracted due to mistakes. In the article Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge, the Journal reports that since 2001, while the number of papers published in research journals grew 44%, the number of articles retracted grew by more than 15-fold.

Read more

Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS

I doubt that lately, few subjects have been studied, discussed or argued as much as the effects that frivolous lawsuits have on the nation’s healthcare system. This summer, three more studies looked at this problem from various vantage points.

First, Jackson Healthcare investigated whether physicians working under contract with the federal government practice less defensive medicine than their private sector peers. As a reminder, as if anyone really needed one, defensive medicine describes ordering medically unnecessary tests, treatments or consultations to avoid malpractice lawsuits. The results?

Read more

School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota Paper: Physician-Rating Websites are Biased in Picking Doctors, Exaggerating Consumer Opinions, Says Paper to be Presented at INFORMS Healthcare Conference June 2011

For several years, Medical Justice has made the case that most doctor rating sites have several fundamental flaws; many lack statistically a significant sample size of patient ratings which impacts the quality of information available to consumers. Doctors see between 1,000 to 3,000 patients a year, depending on specialty. Yet, most doctors only have a handful of online ratings. A paper, “The Information Value of Online Physician Ratings”, being presented at a healthcare conference sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) supports this point.

“The Information Value of Online Physician Ratings” is co-authored by Ritu Agarwal, professor of information systems and director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems, Guodong “Gordon” Gao, assistant professor, and PhD candidate Brad Greenwood, of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, along with Jeffrey McCullough of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.

The authors investigated potential biases among Internet users rating general practitioners on websites. In particular, the study looked at which doctors patients chose to rate, how they rated those doctors and the intensity of the patients’ opinions.

Agarwal states, that physicians are concerned whether “these ratings a true measure of clinical quality.” Or are they just the rantings of a disgruntled minority.

Read more