A small study that connects the two. Some feel this may help doctors with liability:
Dr. William Blessed, director of maternal-fetal medicine at Providence Hospital and Medical Center, in Southfield, Mich., thinks the information from this study may help doctors with liability issues. “In the past, people always thought if there was a hemorrhage, the doctor must have done something wrong. Now, you see you can have intracranial hemorrhage without [cause]; it can occur in a normal birth.”
Uh, who the hell is he kidding? Why wouldn’t lawyers point to studies like this and say that the physician should have done a C-section instead?
Related posts:
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- Home births in New York City
- Home births
- The exploding C-section rate in America
- RIP VBAC?
- C-sections and individual insurance
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{ 24 comments }
Currently I am at a large teaching hospital. This AM, at morning report, it was noted that our C-section rate for January, 2007 was 23%. Here comes 40%.
If you’ll just make sure your action stay within the standard of care, and maintain communication with your patients, you won’t have to worry about lawsuits.
Anon 635PM: Was that meant to be sarcasm? I really hope so because I just about peed my pants laughing.
If it was sarcasm, I wouldn’t have used facts that were so easily confirmed by multiple studies.
Educate yourself, Carol, and then get back to me.
anon 10:15,
So tell smart one, how do I prevent lawsuits as an ER doc when patients come and are injured and die because of something stupid they did or something someone else did, something tragic that happened, or something as a result of decades of self abuse or natural process of chronic illnesses? No, lets call it the doctors fault instead
I get sued 1-2 times/year. Never did I have a prior doctor – patient relationship. Never, was there substandard care provided.
Your original statement has some truth to it for a primary care practice, but don’t spout off that it will prevent all lawsuits – because it doesn’t.
Matthew, the lack of facts behind your opinions never cease to give me a chuckle.
I will say this for you though – you’re consistent.
“Your original statement has some truth to it for a primary care practice, but don’t spout off that it will prevent all lawsuits – because it doesn’t. “
You’ll never prevent ALL lawsuits and I never claimed it would. After all, nothing stops an individual from going to the courthouse and filing something against you right now, without a lawyer.
In fact, no system on earth, short of an absolute bar on all claims, can prevent the filing of claims.
CJD, the lack of facts behind your opinions never cease to give me a chuckle.
I will say this for you though – you’re consistent.
Can I tag along to your next Flat Earth Society meeting? I’m curious as to how you run those and who shows up.
Thanks!
Matthew,
I like how you just repeat what I say. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If you are ever seriously in need of studies to back up what I’m telling you, let me know and I’ll be glad to provide you the links.
I won’t torture you by asking the same, because I know you can’t provide it. You sure you’re not in the Bush administration?
No, I’ve been through this exact process with a number of plaintiffs’ advocates and, I think, with you yourself. The pattern always remains the same, and the fundamental problem is never resolved, and probably never can be. I’ll cite cases where I feel that the jury was either wrong or the dollar amount was arbitrary and excessive, and you’ll disagree with one or both of those two points. I’ll say that you’re biased because you profit directly from such cases and you’re unwilling to look at both sides of the argument, and you’ll say that I lack sympathy or that the poor patient and his lawyer deserved every penny from the evil, careless, rich doctor and his even more evil, careless and rich insurance company. Find another case, repeat the process.
I’ll find a study that some say proves there’s a malpractice crisis, you’ll say that it neglects a key point that you feel makes it invalid. You’ll find a study that you say shows that doctors are, in fact, at fault for any hardships lawyers bring on them, and I’ll disagree, citing the funding sources of the study or the methodology used. Find another study, repeat.
I’m not interested in doing that anymore. It’s a tired process, and a much higher level of the same debate can be seen between people more educated and statistically minded than either you or I, although the cycle of dueling studies tends to remain more or less the same.
The original point was that you seem to think that doctors can avoid being sued by following a (malleable idea of the) standard of care. We both know that’s false. A more careful doctor may very well be able to reduce his risk of being sued, I wouldn’t argue that at all, but to think that the doctor has ultimate and total control over whether he’s sued is, at best, laughable.
And to answer your last bit of silliness, nope, not a Bushie, I don’t vote Republican and have nothing to do with the party. I know it’s frustrating for you to think that an educated person with no financial or personal ties to either the plaintiffs’ lobby or the medical profession would sympathize with those in the healers rather than the parasites, but here I am. Sorry if that makes your head spin, but I can’t do much about that.
” I’ll cite cases where I feel that the jury was either wrong or the dollar amount was arbitrary and excessive, and you’ll disagree with one or both of those two points.”
Yet you haven’t. You’ve never cited a case where you have reviewed the medical records, and then explained why the award was arbitrary or excessive based on the evidence presented.
“I’ll find a study that some say proves there’s a malpractice crisis”
Matthew, as long as insurance represents, on average, less than 5% of a physician’s overhead (according to the CMS), your claims of a universal “crisis” in malpractice insurance will remain overblown. I think you meant a “malpractice INSURANCE” crisis, because I know you’re not willing to admit there is an actual crisis of doctors committing too much malpractice.
“I’m not interested in doing that anymore. “
Obviously, since you never did it in the first place.
“The original point was that you seem to think that doctors can avoid being sued by following a (malleable idea of the) standard of care.”
If I had said that, you would be correct. But I didn’t. In fact, the key thing to avoiding a suit being filed is good communication with your patients, as multiple studies by other physicians have shown. To win a suit, it’s acting within the standard of care. Obviously, there are exceptions, as no system is perfect, even ones where doctors do the judging, as evidenced by the complaining about the findings of the medical review boards. However, the most comprehensive unbiased studies, such as the Studdert study, have found that our current system is actually pretty good on that count.
By the way, if you find the standard of care too malleable, you and your colleagues need only promulgate firmer standards. But everytime you are asked to do that, you wax poetic about the uniqueness of every situation. You can’t have it both ways.
You are good at the strawman argument, I’ll give you that.
As for parasites, find yourself on the wrong end of malpractice, and then you can tell me how parasitical lawyers are as you negotiate with your physician’s liability carrier directly to pay hundreds of thousands in past and future medical bills, lost earning, and pain and suffering. I’m sure they’ll be very eager to write you a check right away!
And I only asked if you were a Bushie because all your comments have such truthiness in them.
Thank you!
We finally agree.
“To win a suit, it’s acting within the standard of care. Obviously, there are exceptions, as no system is perfect.”
Thank you. There’s a problem that needs to be addressed. We agree there are exceptions to the rule you tried to set up, that communication and care prevent lawsuits. As to how many exceptions there are and how severe they are, that’s an entirely subjective point, and one that we’ll likely never agree on.
See? We’re arguing when we agree. What’s the sense in that? We both agree that physicians can’t rely on the system to protect them based entirely on their own actions. I know I can’t expect you to go back and edit your original post for accuracy, but this is the next best thing.
Oh, and here’s the abstract of the Studdert study (don’t worry, I’m not going to sink into the pattern I discussed and that you want to get stuck in, I just found this funny).
“Pressure mounts on physicians and hospitals to disclose adverse outcomes of care to patients. Although such transparency diverges from traditional risk management strategy, recent commentary has suggested that disclosure will actually reduce providers’ liability exposure. We tested this theory by modeling the litigation consequences of disclosure. We found that forecasts of reduced litigation volume or cost do not withstand close scrutiny. A policy question more pressing than whether moving toward routine disclosure will expand litigation is the question of how large such an expansion might be.”
You sure that’s the one you want to cite? I’ll give you another chance, it’s ok. You get three tries in baseball, you should get at least two here.
“However, the most comprehensive unbiased studies, such as the Studdert study, have found that our current system is actually pretty good on that count.”
The Studdert study found that 40% of claims were meritless and that the legal system came to the wrong result 27% of the time. That’s slightly better than a coin-flip, but hardly something to say is “pretty good.”
Look atit this way. Sucks for doctors, sucks for patients, still not to shabby for lawyers.
It’s almost like you guys didn’t read the study. Let me quote its author:
““Some critics have suggested that the malpractice system is inundated with groundless lawsuits, and that whether a plaintiff recovers money is like a random ‘lottery,’ virtually unrelated to whether the claim has merit,” said lead author David Studdert, associate professor of law and public health at HSPH. “These findings cast doubt on that view by showing that most malpractice claims involve medical error and serious injury, and that claims with merit are far more likely to be paid than claims without merit.”
If you guys come up with another method that doesn’t arbitrarily cap the damages of the injured, maybe you can improve on those findings. So far you haven’t.
“Sucks for doctors, sucks for patients, still not to shabby for lawyers.”
You don’t know much about economics, do you?
Matthew, thanks for the abstract. Too bad it wasn’t the authors.
Still looking for all those cases you say you’ve cited where you’ve reviewed the medical records and found the award unjustified and arbitrary? Hell, even I can probably find one – no system is perfect all the time.
Since we’ve both specifically agreed within the confines of this thread that doctors can’t rely on the system to protect them and that they aren’t in control of their own fates, as well as agreeing that either of us could find the sorts of cases you so desperately want cited (in spite of the fact that we’ve been down this road before), why do you keep asking for examples? There’s nothing left to argue about, except that perhaps you should go back and edit your first post to be consistent with your later ones. But you don’t seem terribly interested in discussing that.
I’m glad that you picked that study, though, since it illustrates perfectly the futility of the sort of debate you seem to want very badly. This article does a nice job of summing up how the study itself doesn’t really show anything until each group reading it puts its own spin on it:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1147251932770
This is exactly why dueling studies is a silly style of debate. But you haven’t shown much courage or willingness to discuss the principles underlying the debate (or much principle at all, for that matter, given your inconsistency just within this thread, much less anywhere else), so I guess it’s to be expected.
Game, set and match! Thanks for coming out, I’m sure we’ll rehash the same points at a later date. And you’ll be just as inconsistent then, almost without a doubt. Such is lawyering at its finest, I suppose.
Yeah matthew reahashing with this troll is wothless
re:” If you guys come up with another method that doesn’t arbitrarily cap the damages of the injured, maybe you can improve on those findings. So far you haven’t”
Of course medical courts, medically trained justices, and boardsof lawyers/doctors have all been discussed but ATLA has fought every idea tooth and nail He knows it so I won’t rahash and waste my time.
“You don’t know much about economics, do you?”
Thanks I run a business on government capped payment system so I probably know a little more than you do about the subject. I also know one big payout to you guys can support quite a few “losses”. It is simple mathemetics
“why do you keep asking for examples? “
Because any idiot ought to be able to find the statistical anomalies, but even you can’t do that. I think we can all acknowledge no system involving humans is perfect, but that alone doesn’t mean they fail. Basically, you lied about your claims, because you’ve never read a single medical record from any case, as is now obvious. The fact you would lie from the beginning undermines everything you say.
“This article does a nice job of summing up how the study itself doesn’t really show anything until each group reading it puts its own spin on it:”
I didn’t quote a GROUP. I quoted the AUTHOR of the study, a man with no particular axe to grind. Understand the difference?
This man put out the most unbiased, thorough study on this issue in decades. I’m sorry its results didn’t fit your bias. Hey, I don’t agree with them all either, BUT there’s no doubting its thoroughness and fairness.
Game, set, and match? How cute. I’m glad you believe in yourself, if not the facts. Confidence is worth something. Not much, but something.
“Of course medical courts, medically trained justices, and boardsof lawyers/doctors have all been discussed but ATLA has fought every idea tooth and nail “
Propose those without arbitrary damage caps and you might get somewhere. Of course, who is going to pay for all that additional bureacracy? You going to do more hard work for your insurer and shift their duty to defend to the taxpayer?
Are the catastrophically injured no longer going to need lawyers to represent them?
Look at how much physicians bitch about their own state medical boards – and now we can trust them to automatically get it right?
Have some limited understanding of the proposals you are touting before you go spewing off at the mouth about them.
“Thanks I run a business on government capped payment system so I probably know a little more than you do about the subject. I also know one big payout to you guys can support quite a few “losses”.”
Actually, your business is not capped. You choose to take those caps in exchange for guaranteed payment. No one forced you to do that.
And if you don’t know how many “big payouts” there are, or how much it costs to finance a case, you basically (again) have no clue what you’re talking about with regard to law firm economics.
Silly lawyer, you understand nothing about the financial aspects of medicine yet you lecture (again) like you do. The only doc’s who get away with private pay are plastic surgeons, dermatologists, lasix optho docs and concierge PCP’s. I am an oncologist please do fill me on on turning oncology into “concierge” medicine. I am all ears and waiting for your proposols. With respect to JD costs for suits it is anywhere form 10,000-100,000 per suit (again quite variable depending on the suit as you well know but wouldn’t state). Please do fill in how many “swings” John Edwards would get per CP case win even though there is NO HARD SCIENCE TO BACK HIM UP.
“The only doc’s who get away with private pay are plastic surgeons, dermatologists, lasix optho docs and concierge PCP’s. “
If by “concierge” you mean catering to the wealthy, that’s simply incorrect.
” I am an oncologist please do fill me on on turning oncology into “concierge” medicine. I am all ears and waiting for your proposols.”
I would think YOU would want to figure it out, if things are as bad as you say. Can you not negotiate a flat salary with a hospital? Can you not negotiate a per patient rate?
There is no hard science to back what up? Since you don’t know the facts of Mr. Edwards’ cases, how exactly are you qualified to opine on the science?
Do you treat your patients while knowing nothing about them?
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