Thursday, May 26, 200510
"Our lawsuit-inspired culture is quickly destroying the medical profession. Instead of focusing on treating patients, doctors must now spend their day focused on dodging lawsuits."
A mother's plea to her son continues: "To those lawyers who see doctors and malpractice-insurance companies as bearers of deep pockets, blame is key. If you can make people believe that an imperfect outcome is somebody's fault, well then you've just won the lottery. Doctors are running scared because if every outcome is not a good one, if every diagnosis, procedure, consultation, response or reaction does not work out exactly like everyone hopes, then they become the hunted.
What about the fragile nature of life and the well-known truth that there are never any guarantees? Well, in a lawsuit-happy world that may be true, but it's not quite good enough.
As a doctor, you're now expected to be better than God and if you're not, well, the malpractice monster will eat you whole. It will take your heart, your knowledge, your devotion, your sacrifices and throw it in the garbage. It will laugh at the many people you saved. And worst of all, it will take your soul. That very noble soul which drove you to be a doctor in the first place." (via PointofLaw.com)
A mother's plea to her son continues: "To those lawyers who see doctors and malpractice-insurance companies as bearers of deep pockets, blame is key. If you can make people believe that an imperfect outcome is somebody's fault, well then you've just won the lottery. Doctors are running scared because if every outcome is not a good one, if every diagnosis, procedure, consultation, response or reaction does not work out exactly like everyone hopes, then they become the hunted.
What about the fragile nature of life and the well-known truth that there are never any guarantees? Well, in a lawsuit-happy world that may be true, but it's not quite good enough.
As a doctor, you're now expected to be better than God and if you're not, well, the malpractice monster will eat you whole. It will take your heart, your knowledge, your devotion, your sacrifices and throw it in the garbage. It will laugh at the many people you saved. And worst of all, it will take your soul. That very noble soul which drove you to be a doctor in the first place." (via PointofLaw.com)
Comments
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Anonymous
The tabloid like melodramatic statements continue.
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Anonymous
Mama, don' let your sons grow up to be doctors."
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Anonymous
Too true.
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nutz
Melodramatic perhaps, but maybe its not being overstated at all. Here in Australia, the malpractice monster is just gaining a foothold, and whilst the majority of patients do not see Doctor=God, there are some who do, and others who don't care either way but can see the $$$ coming if things don't go according to plan.
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Anonymous
Vile, self-interested propaganda. What some doctors' wives will do to lobby for lower malpractice rates!! Were the rates to high, honey, so that yr md-hubbie couldn't buy you that new BMW. Hypocrite.
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Anonymous
Were the rates to [sic] high, honey, so that yr md-hubbie couldn't buy you that new BMW. Hypocrite.
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Anonymous
"My husband had to close the office and go beg for money to pay for the insurance which had risen >200%, even though he never committed any malpractice in his career and was never once sued by a patient."
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Anonymous
By the way, if he closed the office, why would he still be begging for coverage? They should have refunded him the unused premium.
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Anonymous
Apparently you've never heard of the "tail" of claims-made insurance.
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Anonymous
Yeah, but do your insurers just raise your rates mid policy period? Wouldn't he have had some warning the rates were going up? If he knew they were going to make him go begging, why sign the contract and THEN quit practicing?
Post a Comment »9:16 AM
10:20 AM
That is an excellent Op-ed.
10:29 AM
8:54 PM
As long as the medical profession and hospitals fail to collect and make public their performance data, only malpractice will keep doctors in line .
8:59 AM
"Nah. They were too high for our family to even lead a middle class life, actually. My husband had to close the office and go beg for money to pay for the insurance which had risen >200%, even though he never committed any malpractice in his career and was never once sued by a patient. It came to the point where for a time we were living like the folk who did the plumbing in our town. The poor felt very sad that their good doc had been run down by lawyers, but they couldn't do nothing. Just keep shining boots.
They shined the boots of hundreds of lawyers whizing by in their Porches, Ferraris, and BMWs (they needed good cars purely because they had their clients' best interests at heart, they always said. They needed to get to their GulfStreams in a hurry, you see. "Bad docs all over the place that we need to drain off livelihood," they happily smirked. "Remember, we're doing this for the patients!!").
Sadly, after a few years of this, my 10 year old son started imagining that there was always blood dripping from these lawyers' hands whenever he saw them, and we wanted to take him to the child psychiatrist.
No such luck. He'd packed up and left years ago, we found out, after he was named in a lawsuit for a drug he never even prescribed. But it took him four years to get it tossed out. His lawyer had said this was a "good outcome". (Maybe, he had upgraded to a Mercedez Benz recently).
12:14 PM
Never had a claim, but his insurance rose 200%. That makes sense. Must be the fault of injured patients. Certainly not the two insurance companies that went broke in PA because of financial mismanagement requiring the other insurers to pick up the tab.
12:07 AM
12:58 AM
5:10 PM
Basically, this letter to the editor sounds like hysterical nonsense. The kind of stuff most physicians would mock ceaselessly if it came from the other side.
10:07 AM