Comments on: Just another malpractice rant

By: AKS

AKS — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:48:48 +0000

Here’s a question: can you PROVE that medical care is worse in a state such as Wisconsin, with significant tort reform, than Illinois, right next door, which is in great need of tort reform?

I say you can’t.

By: Horologium

Horologium — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:10:14 +0000

Malpractice Reform—the real health care issue.
Medical Rants has really been on a roll lately on the malpractice Issue. Read DB’s Medical Rants »this post and this post (especially the comments, particularly the last one) to get an understanding of why Dick Cheney blasted the Kerry/Edwards…

By: Bill Bromberg

Bill Bromberg — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 18:12:12 +0000

The legal definition of frivolous is far from the doctors’ definition of it. Of course if there is any bad outcome it is “debatable” that somehow the doctor/system/hospital was at fault. Thus clear (to doctors) BS gets into the courts to be “debated” by people who do not, cannot, and will not actually understand the science, statistics, and dumb luck (both good and bad) of medical care. The data is clear. If 47% of “high risk
specialy doctors have been sued within the last 3 years either there is daily negligence byt the medical community (and if that’s true the tort system hasn’t helped anyway) or there’s a lot of frivolous (common sense definition)claims. Either way the tort system serves only to transfer wealth from the medical profession to the legal profession with the occasional windfall profit to the “lucky” patient.

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 02:57:47 +0000

arf,

That’s not accurate. You’re assuming the 95% of cases not being filed are being replaced 1-for-1 by so-called frivilous claims. They’re not. There should also be no surprise that docs win the majority of cases which go to trial — a large share of cases the docs might lose are settled out of court, first of all, and second, physicians are able to (or had been able to until very recently) command the best, most experienced med mal attorneys for their defense, and generally present themselves very well in court, with community-based experts to back their side.

By: arf

arf — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 02:18:22 +0000

Am I the only one who finds a contradiction between:

>>And the fact that 80% of cases are won by physicians……..

and

>>Malpractice cases are filed only 5% of the time malpractice occurs……

So the lawsuits “miss” 95% of the “malpractice”, and the few that are filed, the vast majority are filed when “malpractice” was not done, in the eyes of the jury. So they not only miss the 95% of cases, but take aim at cases where the medical care was within standard.

By: jb

jb — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 01:17:54 +0000

The reason that lawsuits by homeless or prisoners are rare is that they can’t command the high jury awards that more sympathetic plaintiffs can, and lawyers are therefore reluctant to pursue them (John Edwards never sued on behalf of a child who died; live but disabled kids are much more lucrative). Nursing homes are unfortunately attracting a lot of attention from trial lawyers. Quite a few nursing homes have been sued into bankruptcy, and many of the survivors have difficulty getting physicians to take care of their residents because of the liablity premium surcharge that most insurance companies tack on if the doc sees nursing home patients. My Google search for Nursing Home Lawsuits brought up 96,000 hits.

By: Evan

Evan — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 17:38:29 +0000

I agree with Ross. Do the following thought experiment.

How many successful malpractice lawsuits have been brought by:

1. Someone over 75 in a nursing home

2. A prisoner

3. The homeless

The primary problem with the current system is that it is both unjust and unwilling to compensate the vast bulk of the victims of malpractice, yet huge sums of money go into the system.

By: Ross

Ross — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 15:38:01 +0000

There is a significant difference between “closed with no payments” and frivilous. For example, a case may be opened in large part because of anger and confusion following a health care provider’s failure to offer a sufficient explanation for an adverse outcome. (which leads to a clarification — when I said “cases are filed merely for a bad outcome” above, I meant for a patient and their attorney to knowingly pursue a case where they know there is no question as to why something occurred.)

Furthermore, quoting me statistics from the nation’s #1 advocate for tort reform is dubious evidence at best.

And the fact that 80% of cases are won by physicians has as much to do with the horrible jury system you deride as the large verdicts you loathe.

Malpractice cases are filed only 5% of the time malpractice occurs, which means the vast majority of the time, substandard care does not result in a lawsuit. An instance of substandard care, unfortunately, also does not often lead to improvement of medical practice. Creating a cap would do nothing to improve care, and in fact would further remove physicians from consequences for poor practice.

Our system can be improved, but a cap isn’t the way to do it.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 05:28:47 +0000

Oh absolutely! Malpractice lawsuits do improve healthcare! I mean, look at how fetal monitors have reduced the incidence of Cerebral Palsy…riiiiiiiight

By: RGL

RGL — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 03:08:40 +0000

To ROSS,

According to Dr. Palmisano, who was AMA president last year, there are about 125,000 medical malpractice lawsuits clogging U.S. courts on any given day. 70% of these are closed with no payments. Of the remaining that go to trial, 80% are won by physicians.

Those statistics, which appeared in the AMA News sometime in February or March this year, clearly suggest the vast number of them are frivolous or have no merit.

These numbers are important to keep in mind since defending a lawsuit nowadays, no mmatter how frivolous, may now cost upward to $40,000 jor more. You and I know that these frivolous lawsuits are filed to shake down physicians for settlements.