Doctor vs doctor

A cardiologist sues a hospital for damaging his rep. The hospital loses. Big time:

A Dallas hospital and one of its top officials were ordered to pay $22.5 million to a cardiologist who claimed they damaged his reputation.
A jury had awarded the doctor $360 million after a 2004 trial, but the judge cut that amount last month.
Dr. Lawrence Poliner said many of his patients came from referrals from the emergency room and other doctors at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. He said competing doctors raised unsubstantiated concerns about his work, leading to a suspension of his medical privileges at the hospital.
The judge ordered the hospital to pay Poliner almost $9.8 million and ordered Dr. James Knochel, who was chairman of the internal medicine department, to pay almost $12.8 million.

More here.

Comments

Gasman
So the public has decided:
Physicians cannot censure the acts of a colleague because they might be wholloped with a huge libel case.
This jury sent the wrong message. If they ever hope to weed out poor physicians, then we can’t beat down anyone who attempts to address this.
We all know physicians whom we wouldn’t allow to treat Saddam Hussein, yet when asked by friends and family we can only suggest considering Dr. X instead.
CJD
What’s with all these physicians using the jury system? Looks we need some caps when you guys go for your “jackpots”. Heck, this guy didn’t even have to suffer a debilitating lifetime physical injury!
How come you guys don’t put up any legislation to cap his damages? Just find it easier to work on the injured, broke, and defenseless?
NoAcuteDistress
Simple, CJD, These physicians learned at the teats of med-mal lawyers like yourself. They realized that the tort system isn’t just for NON-physician scumbags.
lawyersux
Unfirtunately, CJD and other similar Human Pieces of Shit, in most states, like mine, they don’t allow the hospital to be responsible for anything, just the physician, citing “charitable institution” privileges, thus you only get to rape us, not the hospital. This adds to the “us against them” antagonistic mentality you scumbags have created between doctor, patient and institution.
pgbMD
I agree with the decision to the extent that hospital privileging boards hold too much power. The privileging board should not be in the business of punishing or libeling physicians, they should pass the information on up to the state med board and let the state handle the matter. Now if only the state med boards grew some teeth.
anonymous
“Dallas hospital and one of its top officials were ordered to pay $22.5 million to a cardiologist who claimed they damaged his reputation.
A jury had awarded the doctor $360 million after a 2004 trial, but the judge cut that amount last month.”
And the public wonders why physicians are afraid to police their own? This award certainly appears to be excessive. Hard to fathom and another indicator of the need for legal reform. Ridiculous verdicts like this say it all.
CJD
“Simple, CJD, These physicians learned at the teats of med-mal lawyers like yourself. They realized that the tort system isn’t just for NON-physician scumbags.”
Always someone else’s fault isn’t it?
CJD
“And the public wonders why physicians are afraid to police their own? This award certainly appears to be excessive. Hard to fathom and another indicator of the need for legal reform. Ridiculous verdicts like this say it all.”
I think the only need here is for you to read the whole article, particularly:
“In early 1998, Dr. Poliner’s competitors began raising “concerns” about
some of Dr. Poliner’s cases, ultimately resulting in a suspension of his cardiac catheterization privileges-effectively denying him the ability to treat his patients or attract new ones, the lawsuit claims. The peer review committee charged with considering the complaints against Dr. Poliner consisted primarily of his competitors.
Later that year, the hospital’s medical board voted to restore Dr. Poliner’s privileges after several nationally known cardiology experts testified that Dr. Poliner’s care of his patients met or exceeded the standard of care, and that his suspension was unwarranted. Despite the return of privileges, the board upheld the original suspension “based on the evidence available to him [Dr. Knochel] at the time.”
anonymous
Wrong again. The issues of competance, etc. will not be settled based on the facts presented. The jury verdict simply was excessive and it was reduced by a judge to a less lofty but still vertiginous amount.
Of course peer review at any institution will likely consist of your competetors. That is a given.
Getting an expert far removed from the case to render an opinion is akin to getting an expert witness for your side. The opinion is not without bias.
Hope you get it the second time around.
CJD
” The jury verdict simply was excessive and it was reduced by a judge to a less lofty but still vertiginous amount.”
I’m unsure how one can determine a verdict is excessive when they know probably less than 1% of the facts. But then, I can’t diagnose malpractice or the lack of it from a newspaper article, either, so that may be unique physician gift.
“Getting an expert far removed from the case to render an opinion is akin to getting an expert witness for your side. The opinion is not without bias.”
A bias, that if it colors the expert’s judgment, cross examination will point out clearly. No one approaches a situation without a bias of some kind.
lawyersux
“But then, I can’t diagnose malpractice or the lack of it from a newspaper article”
You couldn’t diagnose anything even if the patient told you what their diagnosis was, that’s why you and your brethren became useless piece of shit lawyers, to second guess those of us stuck in this difficult profession.
anonymous
“I’m unsure how one can determine a verdict is excessive”
Certainly the economic value of the damages suffered by the plaintiff, who is in his 60′s, could not be very high. The vast majority of the judgment had to have been noneconomic/punitive damages.
So you can’t be sure that a $360 million dollar judgment in this case, which is $1.20 from every person in the USA, is excessive? I don’t believe it.
Dr. Mary Johnson
There is a lot of evidence out there that (in our current corporatized environment) “Bad Faith Peer Review” exists on a wide scale, and that good doctors are often caught in the crossfire of warring economic interests.
Medical whistle-blowers often find themselves targeted by the process they report to (in an effort to intimidate and silence the physician blowing the whistle).
The peer review process assumes that everyone serving on a peer review committee acts in “good faith”. This is an incredibly naive notion – especially given that every hospital everywhere is its own little fiefdom with its own ruling cliques. There is very little uniformity in how discipline is doled out.
Moreover, the medical peer review process enjoys absolute legal immunity . . . which makes it virtually impossible for physicians falsely accused or caught in the economic crosshairs (because they complained about hospital standards or reported another, more powerful, “connected” doctor) to defend themselves. It is a modern-day version of the Salem Witch Hunts.
Current law also makes it impossible for patients suing for malpractice to get information out of the process.
This verdict being upheld sets a precedent that asks for more transparency, accountability and due process in the “policing” of physicians. These things, along with whistle-blower protection, should make it easier, NOT harder to police truly “bad” physicians.
It’s time for our profession to stop hiding from the lawyers – and stop facilitating cover-ups.
Please see this link, this one, this one and this one.
Anonymous
Hmm… I see these comments and can easily tell that none of either know or have ever worked with Larry Poliner. This isn’t a matter for tort reform or even a matter of ‘us vs them’. This is a case in which a truly superb Cardiologist was gaining patients away from competing physicians and they figured out a way to keep their patient count from leaking. The fact that the hospital solely relied on ‘peer review’ to make their decisions tells me that there needs to be some work done on the system to keep the truly good docs from getting slammed by the mediocre physicians. These decisions hurt Poliner both personally and professionally. I think the jury was excessive in their original award, however, the message sent by the final amount is that something needs to be changed in the review process.

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