Better find out why they aren’t showing up:
Your patient, a diabetic, calls to cancel an appointment for a checkup. He’ll reschedule after he returns from vacation, he says. Several months later, you still haven’t heard from the patient. But you have heard from his attorney, who’s filed a lawsuit against you for failing to diagnose retinopathy. Among the allegations: The patient was never told that the consequences of forgoing regular checkups could be dire.
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{ 9 comments }
The tort bar is nothing if not creative about finding new theories of negligence to keep the jackpots rolling. Soom it will be failure to give the patient a ride to the office.
Free will and personal empowerment apparently stops at the doctors’ doorsteps. Hold on, I’ve got Orwell on the other line.
Last time I checked patients are still free to see another doctor, miss an appointment, cancel an appointment, or pass from this world without asking their doctor’s permission. More recently, Medicare and other HMO’s are herding patients thousands at a time away from their existing doctors without informing them. It is impossible to feel responsible for an act of free will or government-supported HMO coercion, especially when some doctors must see 50 to 100 patients per day to pay the bills.
Well, all the talk about freedom is true. Until something goes wrong. Then it’s the doctor’s fault.
Jackpot.
Can any of you actually cite a successful case on this theory? One that you’ve read the evidence in?
Or are facts no longer necessary to reach a conclusion?
There wasn’t a single documented case mentioned in that article of any patient, anywhere, filing a lawsuit on these grounds. It was entirely a risk management hypothesis — “this could happen if you don’t do x, y, z”. The people you should be aiming your frustration at are your own lawyers — they’re the ones using scare tactics to make you do their bidding.
If a patient ever WOULD sue you on these grounds, s/he is clearly an idiot who deserves both to lose and to be forced to compensate you for all legal costs and time. However, there is no evidence here that any such suits have happened.
>>Or are facts no longer necessary to reach a conclusion?
Never stopped you has it CJD?
“# posted by Anonymous : 2:56 AM”
What are you talking about?
I read the original article. This appears to be a hypothetical case for educational purposes, not one actually filed. I also carefuuly track medical liability cases around the US, and I cannot find any reference to such a case.
This hypothetical case would be an exceedingly hard sell for the plaintiff, even in the most corrupt American liability hellholes.
Ed Sodaro MD
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