A news station reveals a doctor’s name after a malpractice settlement

The plaintiff didn’t really understand the concept of a settlement:

“The doctor responsible for Kate’Â’s death pretty much walked off scott free,” Gavoni said . . .
. . . When Gavoni entered his wife’s allergist’Â’s name it said there was a settlement, but that was it. There was no mention of his wife’s death and the doctor was never disciplined.

Comments

Samson Isberg
What a lousy piece of gutter journalism…Seems that the ancient Hollywood caricature of the journalist as an alcoholic, psychopathic, devious liar is wrong after all;…they are worse…
Anonymous
It is evident from this report that criminally incompetent or negligent physicians are out of control in Connecticut. Immediate action is imperative to protect the innocent citizens of that state.
Perhaps a special prosecutor should be appointed who would be able to bring large numbers of physicians before a grand jury so that responsibility can be assessed and those found at fault subjected to criminal prosecution.
This is yet more proof that physicians must be brought under the control of competent management who will monitor their actions and require that those actions be justified. Physicians must not be able to evade legal responsibility for their behavior.
NeoNurseChic
I find the article to be very skewed. First of all, they listed that physician’s name without even offering proof that he made a mistake in her care. Allergy shots are given all the time, and allergists do keep patients at the office afterwards (at least the first time) in the event of a serious reaction. A serious reaction is a risk… So did he really make a mistake in “overdosing” her with the allergen or is that what the patient’s husband claims is the reason for her death? Just because he settled doesn’t mean he overdosed her. People settle out of court all the time to avoid a lengthy trial and a variety of other reasons. I think it’s wrong to list his name like that when they had agreed not to do so.
Anonymous
I agree with NeoNurse.
To point out a technicality: the confidentiality of the settlement is only binding on the parties involved. Legally there is nothing to stop the media from publishing the doc’s name; they are within their rights to do so.
Maybe the doc should consider suing the husband for breaking the confidentiality clause. At the very least, you’d think that going public would be grounds for a contempt of court charge.
ipanema
Is there really a need to this? Expose them? As a patient and having met some inconsiderate doctors – personal or otherwise and whom I’d just love to slap a malpractice,having their names in public is simply inhuman. One doesn’t have to destroy another person’s life, however tainted it might be. Give them a chance to better themselves. If they’ll do it again, I have no reservations.
Anonymous
How ironic that physicians have a huge problem with “gutter journalism” when it’s about their profession. Yet they have no problem happily repeating literally anything they read, regardless of factual basis, when it’s about attorneys.
CJD
Anonymous
CJD, because it’s like this… physicians are the ambulance and you and your colleagues are the ambulance chasers. Is that simple enough for you?
Or let me quote Mark Twain,
“It is interesting to note that criminals have multiplied of late, and lawyers have also; but I repeat myself.”
Anonymous
Like I said, the irony is rich.
Speaking of Twain, your statement brings this quote of his to mind:
A half-educated physician is not valuable. He thinks he can cure everything.
- Mark Twain’s Notebook
Anonymous
Another example of lousy pseudojournalism by someone obviously ignorant of both law and medicine.
In the U.S. there are two systems: criminal and civil.
Unlike Great Britain, in the U.S. there is no avenue for private criminal action. Thus if someone feels that a criminal action should be pursued one needs to present evidence to a state’s attorney such as a district attorney.
When someone dies, and a criminal action is contemplated, as a generally principle, some malice must be present. To establish malice one must either intend to kill, intend to cause serious bodily harm and death as a byproduct results, or “wanton conduct” which ignores a significant risk of very serious harm has to have been performed and someone dies as a result, or a person dies during the course of a commission of a felony that inherently involves significant danger to another, such as armed robbery.
If none of the above apply, and a criminal prosecution is still contemplated, then involuntary manslaughter is the proper charge.
There’s nothing in this poorly written story that seems to have the above apply. Maybe so, but it’s not reflected in the story.
As for civil actions, there are two approaches: legal, as in a court trial, and out of court compromise, such as a mutual settlement or arbitration.
One major point that most of the public and the virtually all doctors do not realize is that in civil settlements the underlyiong premise is not blame, it’s redress of imbalance.
When my wife called a tree trimmer and had a tree cut down that she didn’t realize was 8 inches over the property line onto our neighbor’s land we settled in a “civil” manner by paying the neighbor $500. He lost a tree, we lost $500. We’re even. Done. Now the $500 is not a tree and the tree is not $500, but in our legal system, for better or for worse, for the past 1000 years, or more, money has been used as a means to redress imbalances. Now, it is admitted, it is an absolute fiction to think that money of any amount is equal to a human life, but it is the method for redress in our system.
In this case the plaintiff, the dead woman’s spouse, settled the case, apparently outside of a court trial. He settled. he agreed. If the entire world thinks it was a lousy settlement, it’s still that individual’s settlement. And his responsibility.
If he settled by himself, alone, then I submit, he had a fool for a client. If he was not well served by an attorney then, there is such an entity as legal malpractice.
Anonymous
There should be NO secrecy clauses in malpractice settlements. They are vital consumer information. Part of the problem with medical markets is that consumers can’t determine the quality of their doctor. The number of suits/amounts of settlement is a very suggestive, though not definitive, figure.
Greedy Trial Lawyer
Settlements in medical malpractice cases are often confidential. This is a requirement imposed by the medical provider or the insurance company. It is not necessarily in the public interest, especially where the number and size of the settlements by a particular provider would alert future patients to a bad actor.
I would prefer that there be no confidentiality. Most of my clients have felt the same way.
Maybe we could adopt some special terms that would not be dollars and cents but would convey the magnitude of each settlement. I suggest they could be similar to coffee sizes I read once in a Dave Barry article: Tall, Grande, Grande Supremo and Grandissimaximo Giganto de Humongo-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong.
Anirban
Anonymous : 4:54 PM
Pretty well said but not all settlements signifies malpractice. It could only be judged by a jury system but rarely they would go to trial .Since it is the insurance who pays for all of it ,they would weigh the cost of defending vs. settling. Nuisance settlements are less but not rare. If you wish the patients to know all these whereabouts are you equally eager that physicians should know the patients who brought suits that were dropped or worse lost in trial.Shouldn’t disclosure be a two way street.
Anonymous
Primum non nocere…first do no harm. The allergist should never have given this whore immunotherapy to begin with…no one ever died from allergic rhinitis…he should have let that bitch keep scratching and sneezing the rest of her life…
Anonymous
To anon 6:06 p.m.:
Oh Christ, not you again.
Your shock value has long since evaporated. In fact you are really beginning to bore me.
Anonymous
“The number of suits/amounts of settlement is a very suggestive, though not definitive, figure.”
In reality no. It has a lot more to do with your specialty. I know an excellent neurosurgeon with multiple suits and a rather poor internist with none. Suits have little to do with quality rather specialty risk.
Anonymous
“In reality no. It has a lot more to do with your specialty. I know an excellent neurosurgeon with multiple suits and a rather poor internist with none. Suits have little to do with quality rather specialty risk.”
Uhh–you are a statistical idiot. Of course OB/GYNs and neurosurgeons get sued more often than allergists. Absolute numbers mean nothing–Relative numbers, compared with the appropriate specialty/geographic region–can be very revealing.
These data are not foolproof–but in a market, like medicine, in which consumers are starved for reliable, objective info. about providers, its benefit to society far outweighs any embarrassment or difficulty to any particular doctor.
Anonymous
“Uhh–you are a statistical idiot”
Really. Please do show the “statistics” to show us how “revealing” the numbers are. In reality you give NO justification for your statement. Just WHO is the statistical idiot? In most states “numbers” of lawsuits are not hidden, in fact they are on medical board websites. But hey have you even BOTHERED to look at your state’s medical board website? No, it is easier to pontificate than to research. Please take the time to look up my state’s website http://www.azmd.gov. Take the time to look up any doctor in my state. The number of lawsuit payments is there in black and white. So are board actions and certifications. Seems pretty transparent to me.
Anonymous
Well, Anon 10:10 there are statistical idiots and factual idiots.
“In most states “numbers” of lawsuits are not hidden, in fact they are on medical board websites.”
WRONG! In very few states are the number and amounts of lawsuits against doctors made public. AZ may be an exception, but it was not clear whether its database included only court-supervised settlements–and it did not include the number of suits, only those settled. In any case, the following link from medical economics provides some background, if you’re interested.
http://www.memag.com/memag/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=111356
Anonymous
Did you look at the website?
Anonymous
A: Your link didn’t work
B: “and it did not include the number of suits, only those settled.”
Wouldn’t you be interested in the number of suits settled which COULD (the operative word here) indicate doctor competence issues? I was dropped from a suit (it was BS) and have to list it from here to eternity for every job or hospital priveledges I request. A dropped suit has nothing to do with doctor competence. You heard just recently (like we all did) 4/10 suits did not involve error or injury so just how dose the number of suits show anything? In reality it doesn’t. Once again you failed to show any coorelation between suit number and level of competence.
Gasman
Everything has a cost. Confidentiality costs because it is of value to the physician. That is, for the maintenance of a sealed record the physician is inevitably willing to pay more because this is of value.
While the plaintiffs will often state that they would like to have no confidentiality clause, it would no doubt be reflected in the settlement offer. Perhaps something like this: $250,000 we all keep our mouths shut, $100,000 you can talk but the physician reserves the right to sue the plaintiff for defamation if he goes too far, $10,000 the plaintiff can talk with immunity from a defamation suit. The ratio of dollar values will differ in each case depending on the value of the silence.
In any even there is always a price point for any of the above three levels of publicity about the case. Though the plaintiff complains they wish the gag clause were not there, they did however accept cash for their silence. For them to claim that the silence was forced on them is a lie; they sold such silence for cash.
Anonymous
“$250,000 we all keep our mouths shut, $100,000 you can talk but the physician reserves the right to sue the plaintiff for defamation if he goes too far, $10,000 the plaintiff can talk with immunity from a defamation suit.”
Considering how hard defamation is to prove, why would anyone give up $150,000 for that?
By the way, there was a recent tax law case involving settlement clauses from the case where Dennis Rodman kicked that photographer. Personal injury settlements aren’t taxable, but confidentiality clauses are.
CJD
Gasman
I’m only wildly guessing at how the two parties might actually value the silence.
I would be disappointed if the plaintiffs would be willing to sell out for silence for even less.
Anonymous
If AZ is an exception, then CT is also. Here you can look up a physician on the DPH web page (just google Connecticut Department of Public Health), and the doctor’s record is just a few clicks away.
This reports the individual suits, when they occured and whether the amounts were below average, average or above average. It also reports DPH disciplinary actions and hospital disciplinary actions.
And there is no expiration date. There are violations in there from the ’80s
Anonymous
Here’s the relevant portion from ME
A move to ban all secret settlements?
There’s been a trend in recent years to limit confidential settlements. More than a dozen states now have—or are considering—such restrictions, particularly in cases involving issues of public safety. A few states have passed “sunshine laws” under which malpractice settlements as well as court judgments become part of the public record.
In Massachusetts, the state medical board’s Web site lists doctors’ malpractice payments as part of their profiles, although the amounts are reported only as “average,” “below average,” or “above average.” In Florida, the Department of Health’s Web site lists all settlements and verdicts—including the specific amount paid. As department spokesman Bill Parizek explains: “If you’re shopping for a car, you want all the information you can get. If you’re shopping for a doctor, you should also have the information you need.”
In South Carolina, the state’s federal judges recently voted unanimously to ban all court-approved sealed settlements. Such agreements, proponents held, make the courts complicit in preventing the public from learning the truth about hazardous products, sexually abusive priests, and incompetent physicians. The new rule will apply only to the federal courts, however, not to state courts, which handle most malpractice cases.
South Carolina’s ban will cover only court-approved settlements, which are typically required in cases brought by plaintiffs who are minors, mentally incompetent, or wrongful-death heirs. It would not prevent other plaintiffs and defendants from reaching confidential settlements out of court, which is how most malpractice suits are settled.
Anonymous
I am a victim of medical malpractice and truly deplorable behavior on the part of hospital personnel and doctors who made every attempt to cover it and manipulate the facts. It was disgusting. I made a provisional settlement agreement and now can expect to recieve a “standard agreement” with a confidentiality clause. I told my lawyer I would not agree to it. I cold possibly lose the settlement, and have been quite ill and a trial would be truly difficult. I have endured much with, I think, with fortitude. Being right gives you that. What a choice though. It’s deplorable.

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