Predictably, trial lawyers aren’t happy about the decision.
Related posts:
- A hospital starts to use a malpractice liability waiver
- Should academic physicians be protected against malpractice lawsuits?
- The heat on academic physicians
- Malpractice defense lawyers: Do they lead physicians astray?
- Academic physicians who teach are seeing a raise
- Some hospitals and nursing homes are asking patients to sign arbitration clauses prior to admission
- Are academic physicians the next target on the inflated executive salary hit list?
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 24 comments }
It is enough to make me want to sign up. Actually, I do teach med students, but my state is not this progressive.
So move to Ohio!
That’s astounding. No matter how poor a job you do, whether you’re drunk, high, or whatever, you are personally immune.
Although the Claims Commission will likely pay in the drunk/high situation, but not much.
Wow. Another victory for . . . poor doctors?
Does that mean that tort lawyers will have one Lexus in the garage rather than three?
Jealous, are you? Doctors make almost 50% more than any other profession – does that make you jealous too?
And they are 50% UNDERPAID at that. If you haven’t walked the walk, don’t talk the talk.
Finally some justice! The lawyers who have gamed the system are responsible for this. They are not upset because they can’t sue, but because they will have to sue the state and won’t be able to simply prey on the sympathy of lay jurors to elicit grossly excessive awards. Add to this that doctors will not be scared away from teaching the next generation of doctors and this is a real win for all legitimate parties concerned.
“That’s astounding. No matter how poor a job you do, whether you’re drunk, high, or whatever, you are personally immune.
Although the Claims Commission will likely pay in the drunk/high situation, but not much.”
Wow. You must be talking about the dirt bag trial lawyers. Most of those scumbags that I know snort coke before going to court and are on there 4th wife…
“And they are 50% UNDERPAID at that. If you haven’t walked the walk, don’t talk the talk.”
So that’s why you don’t comment on the lawyers who represent individuals like you in personal injury actions? Because you’ve not walked that walk?
“The lawyers who have gamed the system are responsible for this. They are not upset because they can’t sue, but because they will have to sue the state and won’t be able to simply prey on the sympathy of lay jurors to elicit grossly excessive awards. Add to this that doctors will not be scared away from teaching the next generation of doctors and this is a real win for all legitimate parties concerned. “
Notice who is always missing from the doctors’ discussion – the victim of actual negligence.
Why don’t you ever want to talk about them? How did they win if incompetent physicians aren’t held accountable? Or are injured people no longer “legitimate”?
“So that’s why you don’t comment on the lawyers who represent individuals like you in personal injury actions? Because you’ve not walked that walk?”
Those “good” lawyers are the necessary rats created by the sewer like system that we are entrapped in.
“Notice who is always missing from the doctors’ discussion – the victim of actual negligence.
Why don’t you ever want to talk about them? How did they win if incompetent physicians aren’t held accountable? Or are injured people no longer “legitimate”?”
When you say “victim” you mean those unfortunate patients that have disease that led to a bad outcome. That does not equate with negligence. Most patients that have disease will end up with less than perfect outcome. In medicine we are dealing with the human body that often the outcome of the disease can not be controlled.
“Those “good” lawyers are the necessary rats created by the sewer like system that we are entrapped in.”
You’re not trapped by anything other than your own fear. Don’t like what you’re doing – quit. Just stop whining.
“When you say “victim” you mean those unfortunate patients that have disease that led to a bad outcome. “
No, I mean people who suffer as a result of a doctor being negligent. Or do you think that never happens?
” medicine we are dealing with the human body that often the outcome of the disease can not be controlled.”
So why should you get more pay if you usually can’t do anything about the problem?
Wow… strong logic… you got him there with that zinger …
He said there are cases when the body responds in an unpredictable fashion to modern medicine … You say, “well if medicine usually does no good then why should we pay you more…”
Do you see how this might leave people joining this thread very confused…
Maybe I’m biased because I get to work with George Annas, but as a medical student I don’t see how this is a good thing (in a principled way) for the practice and profession.
I mean it is great if you happen to have an academic attachment to the state system in Ohio, but this pathological aversion to malpractice suits in general ignores the fact that negligence torts fulfill an important social function. If the system is defective in implementation the solution is to improve the system, not simply remove doctors from it entirely.
“You’re not trapped by anything other than your own fear. Don’t like what you’re doing – quit. Just stop whining.”
Many are closing up shop early.
No fear from me, just fighting back against the frivolous torts seems to be striking fear into you. I guess you’ll have to downgrade from your S500 to an E320. We all pity you guys.
The patient is not prevented from recovery here. Immunity for the individual doc merely shifts the burden to the employer. This is functionally the situation in most academic centers anyway. Everyone and the institution is named, then over time all of the individuals are dropped (one by one over years, in an order and related to depositions in a very well planned out strategy). Now the suit will move to the situation where it would have wound up anyway, but do so without years of shenanegans.
Once everyone quits blowng smoke over this the simple reality will become clear. Patients and lawyers still have a deep pocket to sue. Docs are thrown a bone to continue to work at below market incomes at academic centers. And patients who value the ability to directly sue their physicians will know to seek care elsewhere.
“The bottom line is that the doctor may now be immune from suit and from accountability whenever a student is present during a medical procedure.”
If this is an accurate legal interpretation of the “bottom line” then patients need to demand a priori that there are no students present at the time that any procedure is being performed. Perhaps they should take it as far as brining in their own “patient advocate” to help prevent the situation in which their provider lies to them about the presence of students during the course of conduction of a procedure (one would hope that most patients have finally gotten a clue and realized that their physician is only a patient advocate when the advocacy for the patient serves the physician first and foremost).
Criminallopath, patients can demand the moon, but that doesn’t mean they are entitled to have it. If you go to a teaching hospital, there are students and there are usually disclaimers in the admission paperwork telling patients that is the case and also telling them that by signing in that it is OK by them. If you don’t want a teaching environment in your health care, then obviously you shouldn’t go to a teaching hospital. Find doctors that go somewhere else if that is what you want.
No “patient advocate” is going to change that. If I were confronted by an unreasonably demanding patient, advocate or not, I would tell them to take their business elsewhere. One troublesome patient just isn’t worth the headache, and they could take their “advocate” with them.
In this instance, the State of Ohio is giving teaching physicians the same coverage in teaching settings in university hospitals that the same doctors receive from the Federal government when they are teaching at a VA hospital, which many academic doctors also do. This is hardly a sweeping liability reform, nor does it prevent the filing of claims. What it does do is remove from the academic institutions the costly burden of insurance–now usually done by a self-insured trust in most places with an umbrella policy–and placing that insurance burden on the state. I think that is fair. Teaching hospitals have usually accepted all referrals regardless of ability to pay, and eat a large share of undercompensated Medicaid and uncompensated uninsured and uncollectable work. They usually take desperate and high-risk patients that many private doctors would not take. Their insurance costs are high, and as a result, the ability to properly pay staff is affected by the insurance burden. This measure properly places some of that burden of liability back onto the community that substantially benefits from the availability of expensive large academic medical institutions that have the mission to refuse no one.
“If this is an accurate legal interpretation of the “bottom line” then patients need to demand a priori that there are no students present at the time that any procedure is being performed.”
This sometimes comes up when I am consenting patients for surgery. They request that no residents touch them. My response, which has always worked, is that my surgical assistant will either be a surgical resident (who typically graduated top of their college class, graduated from medical school, and has some surgical skills already) or a surgical technician (who typically only has a high school degree). They always have opted for the resident…
People request that they not see a resident or medical student every once in a while and its laughable, almost elitist to think that they can’t be burdened with having a resident see them. It’s almost like they are too important for that. More than likely a resident will give them more attention and quicker treatment in conjunction with an attending physician than a private physician alone would. They chose to go to the teaching hospital in the first place. No skin off my back they can go to another hospital, I’m busier than I want to be anyway.
Criminalopath
Demanding and recieving are two different things and the majority of physicians will tell them to go to a nonteaching facility if they have a problem, they have too many patients to see as it is.
“Immunity for the individual doc merely shifts the burden to the employer. This is functionally the situation in most academic centers anyway.”
Really? I would have thought they were independent contractors, and thus, not liable for the acts of the physicians.
Comments on this entry are closed.