Patients sue Trover Clinic Foundation doctors, then ask for their help

Nice. That has always seemed reasonable to me.

You sue me…win or lose…I may very well be no longer able to treat you. Those patients have become a financial liability to the medical practice.

As long as there is another available source for their healthcare needs…I have no problem with the hospital saying “so long”.

Hospitals often have tax exempt status and receive huge amounts of public subsidy–on the assumption that they SERVE the public–unless they truly cannot effectively do so.

It’s bizarre to think that a doctor cannot effectively serve a class action plaintiffs–my g-d, if doctors always allowed such personal issues to affect them (i.e., not serving people they personally dislike, smell bad, are ugly, are members of a repugnant religious or social group), doctors shouldn’t be trusted with anything.

If even partially supported institutions are turning away people out of pique, it’s time to rethink the duties and/or public support of healthcare providers.

Doctors don’t “sue the insurers who reimburse them” only the ones who don’t!

Look, it’s a free country. Doctors are free to provide care when, where and to whom they want. Who would presume to dictate what someone else has to do? What arrogance!!

If you sue me, go away! The fact that you sued me demonstrates that you think I provide substandard care. Why would you want that?

Actually, physicians sued Cigna for not reimbursing them enough. Check your facts.

Of course it’s just business for the lawyer, to an extent, just like heart surgery is just business for a physician to an extent. However, for the plaintiff and the defendant, or the patient for that matter, it’s always personal.

The lawyer isn’t the litigant, the one with the complaint. The lawyer is the one who presents the complaint and the defense on behalf of the litigant. Just like an accountant isn’t the person filing the tax return, he’s the one facilitating the filing.

Or I forgot to mention malpractice insurance rates that have forced doctors/entire trauma programs to shut down.

If the clinic receives money from the state or any kind of subsidies to serve the public, then I believe it is wrong to refuse any patient. If not, then I don’t see what’s the problem. If I would be a patient and would believe that a clinic delivers substandard care, I would avoid that clinic. Now, if I wouldn’t really think that but I would just try to milk the system (cash some money, you know, oh, poor me !) then I would try to sue even more.
Now, did any of those patients suffer any REAL injuries because of the x-ray readings ? If not, then it’s only lawyer crap, created to take money from the rest of the society in the name of justice.

We do the same thing in my group practice. You sue us, you need to seek your care somewhere else. You’ve proclaimed you think we provide poor care, plus you’re a risk to sue us again. We’ll set you up to go see somebody else.

The comment about there not being a lot of nonmeritorious malpractice suits in this country is ludicrous.

“Contrary to Dr. Tony, doctors are not “free to provide care when, where and to whom they want.” They are highly regulated particularly if they take medicare reimbursements. You want complete freedom?don’t take government money!!!”

The poster is wrong here.

Seeing patients who have government insurance does not impose an obligation to see every patient who has government insurance. Nor does it forfeit the right of a provider to terminate a relationship with a patient for any reason, or even for no reason. Doctors are generally free to see whomever they choose to see and conversely, decline to see hose they don’t want to see. Who insures the patient is irrelevant.

Government insurance is paid for work done, not in anticipation of future work, and unless the doctor has accepted a capitated contract with payment in advance, he is free to say no.

The comment about doctor’s “egos” is silly rubbish. Issues of contract fulfillment are separate from tort claims, and malpractice theory has relied on tort law principles for the better part of a century (whereas contract law once was the
principle under which medical malpractice was litigated, but not for a long time)

GG,

That’s the best comment on this post.
I only have to say that you are completely unjustified in calling these lawyers “overzealous”. They are not merely “overzealous”. They are darn near animals, as far as I’m concerned.

ZZ

Funny thing is, none of the patients claimed negligence before the films we re-read. One must assume that they in fact suffered no detectable harm – one of the requirements for proving negligence.

It was only after some lawyer got wind of the review of the films, that he went out and solicited clients with promises of a multi-million dollar jackpot, with absolutely no risk to them.

If the hospital were public, it would often avoid the problem by limiting their liability under various Tort Claims Act laws.

In my state, the limit for our public medical school and hospital is $500,000…..TOTAL damages. Not “pain and suffering” noneconomic damages, but TOTAL damages. Similar low limits for the public hospital districts.

As a result, they get sued less, the lawyers themselves say they will turn down cases against the public entities, looking for a way to get at some private individual peripherally involved with the case. Just going by what med/mal plaintiff trial lawyers have said to the press in my area about this issue.

Public hospital districts get similar tort limits in my state.

Only if you’re a GOVERNMENT entity. A private facility doing the same thing gets no protection.

The anonymous who’s a lawyer is being absurd.

Every ssingle medical procedure, every single pill, every single capsule, every single diagnostic method or technique, all have a definite amount of risk attached to them.

That’s simply a necessity of this existence. If the best detection rate for a given radiologic study is say X %, what that means is, if even God came down on earth to read the films, he’d miss at least 100-X %. To penalize a doctor for this is CRAZY. You are basically saying that you want him to practice at a level that is supra-human, that with all the myriad stresses and imperfections on the system that he bears, he must nevertheless practice at a level never ever achieved on the face of this earth, a level simply unachievable even if everything else in the system were perfect.

And let there be no doubt whasoever that the tort system as it is currently set up does precisely that – punish doctors for things they usually have absolutely no control over. If we had a fairer, no fault system like Australia, that’s a different matter. But here, the precise implication of tort law in medical malpractice cases is that in those cases where the plaintiff wins, the doctor did wrong, was guilty – he screwed up. He was a “bad doctor”. All of which is (in the large majority of cases) absolute, complete, utter crap.

The fact is, a human being practising in any highly technical field has a certain success rate for every single thing he does.

In a fair world, a doctor should be able to tell a patient the folloeing, and the patient will agree:

“I beleive procedure X is the best procedure for you to undergo to adress problem Y, based on literature A,B,C.

If I do not practice to the standard, you may sue me for damages, and I will gladly pay. But if I meet or exceed the standards, then no matter what the outcome, even death, I cannot be expected to pay for things which, as only a human being, I have no control over.”

Of course, to a large number of greedy brutes who masquerade as educated professionals today, this is entirely out of the question. They thrive on instigating confusion and disagreement between patients and their doctors, actually sinking to such depraved depths as using review data (which showed the radiologist’s rate as within the standard of care!) to mount a lawsuit against a doctor, instigating patients who had been so weel they did not even know they were actually feeling “outrage” and “emotional distress”!

ZZ

The other thing he doesn’t understand is that one’s “success rate” isn’t the issue. It’s whether their actions meet the standard of care for their locality.

Only an egotistical, money driven (wait, that’s redundant) doctor would assume that error rate is the same as standard of care. Or that they were getting the unvarnished story from the AMA.

And with this kind of legal system, patients have no chance to really know how good a doctor is, because a doctor must be insane to start publishing real numbers or real errors. So, actually, the current malpractice system encourages and perpetuates lies and mistakes.

As far as I can tell, from the articles (AMA and regular news feeds), no one was actually injured in the sense of missing a cancer. A complaint was filed, it was investigated, the mammography readings were acceptable. These people sued over the emotional distress that their mammograms may possibly have been incorrectly read.

Doesn’t stop them from suing, though….

To the anonymous who wrote at 10.46.

You entirely miss the point.

The issue here is that doctors are being sued even when they meet or exceed standards of care, simply because an outcome was not satisfactory to the patient.

The problem, and this is something too many people don’t realize, is that there is simply no way any doctor, any human, can avoid a bad outcome every single time. It just doesn’t happen, no matter how good you are.

Even if you are, say, a cardiologist who performs miracles in the cath lab on a regular basis, there will always be that patient who ate like a pig, smoked like a chimney, excercised like a doorstop, refused all your medical advice, and turned up one day with a massive anterior MI that all the gods in the world could not have pulled him out of. And whose wife thinks it’s all your fault that he won’t be around still eating like a pig with her for the next 50 years. And that you’d better fork over the millions that are the only thing that may somehow assuage her of the profound emotional toll she’s felt since you screwed up.

The radiologist(s) in this story, like so many others, is the victim of a bunch of pond-dwelling bottom feeders. The hospital conducted a review which although, as I understand it, it was under no obligation to make public, did make public. The review showed that the radiologist’s “errors” were well within the standard of care. Undetered, Messrs. Scum & Co used the data from the review to fish for clients and instigated them to sue the radiologists for “outrage” and “emotional distress” which, until the enlightenment conferred by Scum et al, they were quite unaware that they were supposed to be feeling. I’m sure that they’ll now also be feeling acutely the physical effects

I have no argument if these folks had launched their assault on a genuinely bad doctor, eg. someone who, say, went out for the morning coffee and crumpets while his patient lay bleeding to death in the OR. In fact, in such cases I’d wholeheartedly support action against the doctor, and will testify for the plaintiff if requested.

However, the VAST majority of malpractice cases in USA are brought by the unscruplous against the innocent. The very high success rate of doctors in med mal suits brought to trial (80%) is consistent with that idea.

Your (patently ridiculous) suggestion however does not address the problem at all. The problem is that there is a massive industry set up to assault doctors who’ve done no wrong except not being god, for stuff they simply cannot control (most of the time). How does your “solution” even address the problem?

Let us say we made it compulsory for every bit of “performance metrics” be made publicly available (we will ignore for the moment the fact that this is impossible). This will probably cause a few docs at the very top to get overwhelmed with patients wanting their services, and a few docs at the very bottom to lose it.

But how will this affect the malpractice lawsuit crisis? Do you imagine that only “bad docs” get sued now, and that your proposal will simply run them out of business? Do you imagine that the vast majority of lawsuits now are not filed against the average and best guys, but only the bad? Do you actually believe that the only time doctors are sued is when they are clearly negligient, and not when there is a bad outcome, no matter how top flight their doctoring was? Do you imagine top docs are not sued all the time? You are incredibly misinformed to suggest that your proposal will even dent the efforts of Messrs. Scum and their kind. The onslaught against doctors will simply continue unabaited. Why should it not, when the real problem is not being addressed, but, as usual, it is the victim who is being blamed?

How good a doctor is, how blameless a doctor was in a given case, has never been the criterion by which lawsuits were filed. You are simply delusional if you think it is.

ZZ

Anonymous, you claim that docs are getting sued even though their acts don’t fall below the standard of care. Perhaps you can share with us how many and the names of the cases where you’ve reviewed the medical records?

Can you tell me, have the number of med mal suits increased or declined in the last few years?

Can you tell me the historical rate of return for med mal insurers? Not just 2002, but say a 20 year period?

Do you guys know any of these facts? I’ve never seen so many scientists rely so heavily on anecdotal evidence.

It appears that for Anonymous and ZZ, knowledge is not a prerequisite to having an opinion.

Cases that are tried are generally not frivolous. They’ll be tried for a couple of reasons.

1. The insurance company exposure is already so high that it’s worth it to them to take a shot. For example, even on a good case, if there is $1 million in coverage but economic damages alone are in excess of that, they’ve got nothing to lose by trying the case.

2. There is an honest disagreement about the standard of care and the parties can’t agree on a number which will make it worth it not to try it.

Do you think the cases that are tried are all the suits that exist out there? Where the negligence is clear, cases get settled. How can you say most suits are bullshit if you don’t factor in the 90% that settle?

Stop with your bullshit about how juries give money because they feel sorry for people. You’ve obviously never sat on a jury in a civil case or argued a case to one.

You’re right though, they do get it right a lot of the time. So why are we talking about caps? Are you wanting it both ways now?

Curious JD:

As usual, you’re wrong.

I have never implied that there is never a reasonable reason for the 80% of med mal cases that are decided in favor of doctors to be brought to court.

I am saying that, whether or not you or I or anyone thinks a particular case is “frivolous”, the outcomes in the overwhelming majority of cases is very revealing.

**80%** of the cases are decided in favor of the doctors.

That directly proves that your claim – that docs are only sued if they fall below standards – is the equivalent of horse manure.

You can twist and squirm all you want, but you can’t get around the fact: huge numbers of doctors are being sued despite their doing no wrong whatsoever.

Seriously, lets say that you had a scenario where 80% of prosecutions for, say, homicide ended in aquittals and conclusive proof that the people charged were innocent, would you say that the system was working?

You ask about the cases that do not go to trial. The reason I didn’t discuss that is that there is no good data about the details in such cases.

Why are they settled? Unlike the cases that go to trial (where it is clear that most of the doctors involved are innocent), the settled cases have a very heterogeneous mix of defendents. There are the clearly, horribly negligent – the “docs” who really shouldn’t be practising. There the people like Dr. Moore who Kevin has recently posted on – fine doctors who get slammed because a minor clerical mistake caused a bad outcome.

But there are also numerous cases where the doctor feels he is clearly innocent of any and all wrongdoing, but is forced to settle because the insurance company does not want to go to trial.

You are simply spewing complete garbage, as usual, when you claim that the settled cases are some sort of homogenous mass of incompetents. They are not.

This case clearly illustrates the problem.

Finally, it’s always amusing to watch your type discuss an issue. You asked if I had any evidence for my positions. I provided you with the Harvard studies, among other things. The Harvard studies convincingly showed that, in their sample, 55% of all malpractice claims did not even have evidence of any medical injury, negligent or not. Furthermore, in 40% of the cases where there was no evidence of negligence, the “victim” was nevertheless awarded an indemnity payment.

Your response to this is of course, per usual, a deafening silence, followed by a jump to a new question.

Until you are prepared to honestly discuss the issues and not merely troll out ATLA talking points, until you are prepared to honestly face the fact that the trial lawyers are doing a horrendous amount of damage to the country, don’t expect me to respond further to the drivel you market.

ZZ
(Please note the post at 2.25 was also mine).

Curious JD

This is rude of me, and I don’t wish to say it, but you are being truly – incredibly – dense. It’s a little scary to think that you might be a practising lawyer.

1. Once more, you repeat your pattern of never responding intelligently to an argument, but flit from one issue to another after being defeated at each.

In your latest post, you again fail to acknowledge that you were wrong to deny that large numbers of doctors get indiscriminately sued when they are completely and totally innocent of wrongdoing. Or, if despite the overwhelming factual evidence you still feel you are correct, to offer any sort of defense for your position.

2. Lets see where little JD has traipsed to now, shall we? He’s now flitted on to yammer incoherently about

a. tort reform and its perceived weaknesses,

b. why we should never critique studies but accept all of them

c. an astonishingly naive fantasy of how physicians perceive themselves.

In responding, I’d note the following:

1. Nowhere in this thread, not once, have I made claims about the desirability or otherwise of tort reform. Yet we have the following tirade from Ms.Panties-in-a-bunch:

How about the fact that the nation’s largest med mal insurer said that caps on noneconomic damages would affect at most 1% of their losses. Not a study, but DIRECT FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH… What’s your opinion on that? I mean, the centerpiece of your “cure” for this “crisis” has no effect? How’s that grab you?

Well, for starters, it leads me to believe I’m wasting my time arguing with a particularly dull fellow – I never said anything like what you ascribe to me. Secondly, since you’ve now asked what I think of it, I do not think tort reform is a perfect solution to the med mal crisis. The crisis faced by doctors, and the larger problem of errors in health care delivery, is exceptionally complex and multifactorial such that any one measure (particularly one that is meant to provide symptomatic relief) will not completely obliterate the problems.

However, I do believe that tort reform can definitely be part of the solution, and the available data clearly show, on balance, that it can work. The actual data from capped states is pretty conclusive. By the way, your naivete is charming: data counts for infinitely more than claims, whoever’s mouth it came from. Folks in medicine have learnt to respect that rule.

The thing I do not like about the type of tort reforms frequently proposed is that there is a small number of plaintiffs who might be paid less than they should be paid.

A large part of that problem of course is that trial lawyers demand such an exorbitant portion of the indemnity payment. (It’s really quite shocking when you look at what they charge – I don’t think there is a single profession on earth that is as greedy. The tired excuse trotted out is that they only get paid when they win, but as a principle that’s pretty disgusting since they are basically garnishing all their money from the very people who actually may have been genuinely harmed, and secondly even then there is no justification for the exorbitant percentages – up to 50%!!)

But the system we currently have is even worse than a tort-reformed scenario – it harms a lot more people in terrible ways. Leave alone the doctors, huge numbers of whom are 100% completely blameless. A bigger problem is the shocking effect the current system has had on the practice of medicine and the health care system in general. There is huge wastage, loss of life, loss of health. Where we are at now is the worst possible scenario, and even tort reform, imperfect as it is, will be better.

Finally, in your last paragraph you go completely bonkers. I never said any of those things. I understand you must feel bad at being repeatedly owned, as the kids say, but really, you can’t expect people to take you seriously in a discussion when you behave like a raving lunatic.

Let me introduce myself – I am one of the patients that has filed suit in this case. I trusted Trover Foundation to employ the highest calibur of persons in the medical field – as had always been my prior experience – with them.

After reading this thread, I realize those of you posting here truly know very little of the “facts” as they exist. The KY Medical Association found that this doctor “proved an immediate threat to his patients” and revolked his license. Granted he has since regained them but only with certain qualifying conditions.

Missed cancers? You bet. Death due to misreadings? Yes Sir. Emotional trauma to those of us affected? Absolutely. My entire life has changed. As has the life of many others in this suit. I have gotten to know several of them through the course of this ordeal.

Are you aware there was a peer review prior to his dismissal. Amazing what was brought to their attention by his peers.

An ambulance chasing attorney? I’m sure those do exist. But that is not the case in this matter.

Lives have been destroyed. Not just patients lives – but our families lives.

Compensation is not of issue here. In fact – when initially discussing my situation with the attorney – he knew it wasn’t about money for me. No amount of money can ever replace what was taken from me and my family. It’s about putting a stop to this doctor (I use that term only because I must) before he wrecks more lives.

How about when a radiologist grabs the wrong two x-rays from the jacket and compares two x-rays taken 20 minutes apart instead of the proper comparison of x-rays taken six days apart. Then he writes his report saying there is no change (of course) when if he had read the correct x-rays, it would have shown a raging change and severe pneumonia. Is that just a bad outcome? Then the pulmonologist says he agrees with the radiologist and says he too read the x-rays and sends the elderly patient home with severe pneumonia. The patient dies a horrible death on a respirator and the patient’s family sues. Now the pulmonologist refuses to treat the attorney’s father and has threatened to have the entire family thrown out of the clinic. He says the attorney is a criminal and the patient’s family is crazy. Well, I say hoorah because the doctor is a flaming incompetent ass who should not be allowed to treat anything. I say, patients and fellow doctors need to weed these crummy doctors out and instead of them saying they won’t treat us, we need to tell them that they are not fit to treat us. There are too many substandard doctors out there that are protected by their fellow docs and defended to the hilt by the insurance companies.They just need to clean house! If you put garbage in… you’re going to get a bad outcome!!!!

Imprecise science / art or whatever, there are standards of care that we must follow in treating patients. If we, as health professionals, did a better job of weeding out incompetents the “litigation crisis” would not exist. Some are better off in academic health professions, some are better in practice, some should not be in the health professions at all. I’ve seen some ridiculously frivolous claims by patients who were sure they had a claim, but I’ve also seen the cases in which the standard of care was not followed and as a direct result a patient was injured or died. I look at it similarly to a speeding ticket. If I don’t follow the speed limit (standard of care), regardless of the reason or excuse, I’ll get fined. I may “get away with it” 9 times out of 10, but that 10th time I’ll have a big fine. If our colleagues don’t “play by the rules,” and we don’t take them to task about it, then we all get “hit” with the increased insurance rates – just like we all are when too many people in our area are getting too many speeding tickets and having too many wrecks. That’s just the way insurance companies work. If we want lower insurance rates, we need to “police” ourselves **and** our colleagues who contribute to those rates. That includes raising heck at hospital board meetings when there is substandard care or management in any hospital department – nursing, radiology, medicine, whathaveyou. If we don’t take hold of the situation from within, we deserve what we get.

In reading again the original post that led to this discussion – the heading was “Wanting it both ways: We sued you, but we still need you” is a bit misleading as is the previous posting.

Yes, we sued the radiologist and the Foundation. Yes we still need you. But you must consider the reasons.

The radiologist was sued because … well that issue speaks for itself. The Foundation was sued because of the cover up that followed. Eventually the minutes of the (inhouse) medical review were obtained and the disclosures prove the Foundation knew the problem yet ignored it for a long time.

We need you … yes. We do need you. We need local care in a rural area. We need you because the old saying is so true – “one bad apple does not spoil the whole bunch”. There are many excellent physicans practicing in the walls of this Foundation. And they deserve our respect, our patronage, and our dollars. They, like many of you, are the essence of the oath. The *other* one doctor in particular deserves none of that.

I agree too that you must stand up for what is right. I applaud those of you that do. YOU are the best of your chosen profession.
Thank you.