Military medical malpractice

A very sad story, but if they change the doctrine guess how many physicians they would get to sign up for the military. Even less than they do now.

kytek
Sad case. However ONCE AGAIN VERY POORLY REPORTED. Did CBS seek out any expert doctor’s opinions? no. They sought out a lawyer’s who ponitificates and states “I hope members of congress are watching”. Why can’t they lay journalism ever get their act together on this type of reporting. From the (extemely lousy) reporting it appears that lesion was present back in 1997 and documented. It “appears” from the extremely limited info that doc screwed up and very well a reprimand is justifiable. Then the piece fast forwards to 2005 to Iraq and blames the docs there for not immediately biopsing the now enlarged lesion. In the perfect world that would have happened. Iraq is not the perfect world as anybody watching TV knows. IMO it is easy for a lawyer to sit back in the US and talk about how reprehensible it is that the patient did not have a skin lesion biopsied in a combat zone. Anybody whose been there knows the reality of non emergency (ie trauma) medical care in a combat zone is a little different. The sad reality is, if the melanoma had been present and growing since 1997 (it was a large size and ulcerated from the sounds of the crap-ass reporting in 2005), it probably had already metastaized by 2005. Anybody who has taken care of metastatic melanoma patient’s knows the prognosis at that stage. You can’t sue government for a myraid of reasons while on active duty not just med-mal and yes, dear reporter, when you are active duty military you don’t have the same “rights” as being a civie. If you did, I highly doubt we would have a functioning military in Iraq right now with soldiers starting to to refuse their third or even fourth tour (they obviously can’t do that). The reporter clearly never served in the military. Though this was an apparent misdiagnosis not a war-related trauma, just think how many trauma surgeons we would have in the military if families/patients could sue for military malpractice for war injuries (the logical conclusion if you want to open up military med mal to the civilian system). I just somehow don’t think this would be a topic of conversation in 1944.

“Since no path tests were recorded on the same document, I’m interested as to how the doctor came to that conclusion and very surprised it wasn’t just written down as a suspicious mole.”

Correct K: It is pretty hard to figure out from the news report what happened. But we are dealing with Katie Couric after all. “Getting it right” is not her or CBS’s, strong point.

I can see it now in the future of military medicine. Our trauma surgeons desperately trying to save the lives (and bodies) of our wounded soldiers will have to worry aboutthe med mal lawyers looking over theire backs. The sad fact is I have met very few lawyers who have actually served in the military since 1973 (end of the draft). Eric Turkowitz would be proud.

I’ve only read of a few of these comments. I find none of those arguing against re-visiting broad interpretations of Feres compelling. Speaking to speculative future impact on physician recruiting, referring to ‘the vast majority of these claims are weak or frivolous in civilian life,’ etc., belie the obvious harm and injustice visited on service members by negligent military doctors. I am a victim of Army medicine. I may be permanently disabled because of an Army DO’s failure to treat. And because the deck is stacked is against soldiers in terms of proving compensable injury and disability, the long and expensive fight, for me, to receive the paltry VA benefits to which I am by law entitled has just begun. Before one decides to rant about ‘all’ or ‘every’ or ‘most’ or whatever cases lacking merit, they ought to make themselves aware of the facts first. And the fact is some members of the military are harmed by military doctors. And those who are have no legal recourse because of broad interpretations of Feres. An interpretation the original decision and those making it would have likely found disgusting.

you can obviously tell that these anonymous idiots who have so much to say against what us military and veterans know have never been in the military of have anyone in their family who’s been military. i agree with you jim.. how do you know, the anonymous above me, that we dont know the facts that we are malpracticed on almost every single day when we walk in to one of our medical facilities. these so called doctors that supposedly know what they are doin better be glad they are protected by that stupid feres law because im sure the government would be asking china for money again of all the law suits they’d have against them and we’d win. God will be their judge when the time comes.