Eric Shore: “If, for example, you write something in a blog and a person hundreds of miles away applies it to himself when he shouldn’t have, your disclaimer might be the only thing standing between you and a successful liability suit.”
Good point. With that in mind, I encourage you to read the disclaimer here at Kevin, M.D.
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General information has First Amendment immunity. Chemistry texts causing an explosion, recipes causing illness, a travel book failing to warn the 15 foot surf of Hawaii can be dangerous, a mushroom encyclopedia causing a wild mushroom eater to go into liver failure. No liability.
Medical advice to a person about a specific condition over the internet may mean, 1) a doctor patient relationship has formed; 2) the advice requires a license where the patient lives; 3) shouldn’t a cursory, ordinary individual exam take place, in case the patient does not really know what he has?
A disclaimer offers very little protection. The unauthorized practice of medicine, a crime, makes any harm a negligence per se. That means no deviation from professional standards need be proven by the plaintiff, just the medical advice without a license.
Individual advice is not a good idea, neither from a medical nor from a legal standpoint. The reply should be, seek medical attention or read this website’s general information. If the doctor insists on replying otherwise, the reply should be a discussion of the condition, not of the patient. “Any change in a mole, including size, shape, color, soreness, or pain could be cancer. So says, WebMD. Please, see your doctor.”
I would like to see 1) a national medical license; 2) legal immunity for the internet aspect of the contact, to make it grow; 3) a statutory “as is” legal doctrine holding the patient assumes the self-evident risk of advice without physical contact. The patient could do much of the exam by answering questionnaires. The doctor could focus on the areas of concern and save time. People with very rare conditions could access to rare expertise without traveling long distances.
These changes would increase competitiveness, decrease cost by eliminating overhead, and help people get treated earlier in the course of an illness.
Consult an attorney before setting up a blog? What’s the point of setting up the thing if it justs exposes you to liability, doesn’t earn you any moeny, and will cost money to consult an attorney, who i am sure will not work for free. (Only doctors are supposed to work for free, right?)
The legal system today sucks and is out of control if this is truly a source of lawsuits. Any schmuck with sense knows that internet advice is risky, since it is free. Only freeloaders looking for a payday would try to find liability in that advice. And dopey judges buy into it.
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