————————-
RNs employed by the Pharmacies will treat minor medical problems.

Pharmacists will not be treating patients.

If hospitals/clinics would respond to patient complaints more quickly and honestly, that might reduce malpractice suits. If regulatory agencies would extend statutes of limitations so that if patients got nowhere with their doctors, they still had somewhere to turn, that might reduce malpractice suits. As it is, if a patient actually wants action to be taken, turning to a malpractice attorney ASAP is about the only option available. No, it’s not right, but give them some alternatives…

Half of U.S. doctors mum about incompetence: survey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science EditorMon Dec 3, 2:07 PM ET

Nearly half of all U.S. doctors fail to report incompetent or unethical colleagues, even though they agree that such mistakes should be reported, researchers said on Monday.

They found that 46 percent of physicians surveyed admitted they knew of a serious medical error that had been made but did not tell authorities about it.

“There is a measurable disconnect between what physicians say they think is the right thing to do and what they actually do,” said Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the survey.

Doctors are also surprisingly willing to order unnecessary — and often expensive — tests such as magnetic resonance imaging or MRI scans. Just 25 percent said they were looking out to ensure they did not unintentionally treat someone differently because of their sex or race, the survey found.

In 2000, the U.S. Institute of Medicine reported that up to 98,000 people die every year because of medical errors in hospitals alone.

Campbell and colleagues surveyed more than 1,600 physicians in 2003 and 2004 for their report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Up to 96 percent of those surveyed said they should report all instances of significant incompetence or medical errors to the hospital clinic or to authorities. The exception was among cardiologists and surgeons, with just about 45 percent agreeing.
And 85 percent of most doctors said they should tell patients or relatives about significant errors.

But this did not translate into practice.

Forty percent of the doctors said they knew of a serious medical error in their hospital group or practice but 31 percent admitted they had done nothing about it at least once.

Doctors also did not always practice what they preached ethically. While 93 percent of doctors said they should provide care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, only 69 percent actually accepted uninsured patients who cannot pay.

LETTING COMPETENCE SLIDE

While most of the doctors agreed they needed to keep up with changes in the profession and have their competence reviewed, only 31 percent had undergone a competency review in the past three years.

Dr. James Thompson, chief executive officer of the Federation of State Medical Boards, said one problem may be that doctors know there is not much that can be done to help doctors who are struggling to be competent.

“There are very few places where they can send them for remediation,” Thompson told a news conference.

And medical boards may not have the resources to punish errant doctors.

“There are restrictions on state medical boards that inhibit their ability to go after physicians aggressively,” Thompson said.
“There are state medical boards that don’t even have their own teams of investigators,” he added. “There are state medical boards that are, quite frankly, underfunded and understaffed.”
But he said medical boards cannot act unless someone reports a problem doctor.

“State medical boards only react to complaints — they are not a policing agency,” Thompson said.

(Editing by Will Dunham and John O’Callaghan)
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2007/12/03/eline/links/20071203elin023.html

I don’t see much coming from your direction but opinion, either. But it is certainly not easy to file a malpractice claim, as most lawyers will only accept rock solid cases that have a strong chance of winning. The very fact that it is so difficult to win is why they stick to iron-clad cases.

http://ezinearticles.com/?10-Misconceptions-About-New-York-Medical-Malpractice-Lawyers&id=471547

“Filing a medical malpractice lawsuit in New York is downright difficult. A lawyer must first conduct a thorough investigation of the facts and then have all the medical records reviewed by a medical expert. Only after the expert has confirmed evidence of wrongdoing; that the wrongdoing caused injury; and that the injury is significant, can the attorney go forward and file suit.”

“You present yourself as one who has suffered malpractice. Are you familiar with the ” A reasonable and prudent member of the profession” standard? Are you a member of the profession, and if not, what qualifies you to define malpractice?”

What qualifies you to define malpractice? Are you a lawyer, familiar with the laws in every state? Apparently not, if you think it is easy to file a malpractice claim.

“And bad malpractice suits are never brought, and doctors never commit suicide as a result. You disregard the pain of a wrongful lawsuit as trivial. How nice for you to feel sorry for yourself, and have no feeling for the suffering of another. Yes, pain hurts, but you don’t care about anyone’s pain but your own.”

No one ever said that bad malpractice suits don’t occur. But considering that doctor groups and tort reform advocates behave as if every malpractice case is illegitimate, it’s rather hard to take any doctor’s claims of “frivolous lawsuits” seriously. Blame your own lack of willingness to acknowledge reality for that one, and not any alleged indifference to suffering on my part. Nor did anyone say that getting falsely accused of something is trivial. But compared to a lifetime of pain, suffering, inability to earn a living, etc that can occur in many cases of severe malpractice, merely being sued is a walk in the park, especially after you get to come home to your nice cushy income after it’s all over. As a chronic pain patient, I am on trial 24/7 as a potential drug seeker, drug dealer and malingerer who can be sentenced to torture at a moment’s notice anytime some guy in a white coat gives the word, so don’t lecture me about the “pain” of false accusations. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of them.

The large majority of malpractice cases are found for the doctor so in short the doctor is in court the majority of the time when he/she DIDN’T commit malpractice. How is you statement a “fact” when you have given absolutely no evidence to support it.

~Criminallopath~

I know that most docs would happily do the same to me if the situation were reversed.