Posted on 08/19/2011 10:10:07 AM PDT by Freeport
Most doctors will face a malpractice lawsuit at some point in their careers, a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found.
The threat of being sued creates a "tangible fear" that can lead physicians to practice costly "defensive medicine," the researchers concluded. Despite recurring calls for medical malpractice reform, the study found doctors in virtually all fields face a high risk of ending up in court.
The study looked at malpractice data from 1991 to 2005 across nearly 41,000 physicians covered by an unnamed national insurer.
The researchers at Harvard University and other institutions estimated that 99 percent of doctors in "high-risk" fields faced a malpractice claim by the time they were 65 years old. In low-risk fields, the figure was still 75 percent.
In any given year, the study found 7.4 percent of doctors faced a claim.
Most of the suits did not result in payment -- only about 1 in 5 claims led to a monetary settlement. The study also did not suggest the claims were in any way frivolous.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Interesting statement.
Those crazy trial-lawyers and their lawsuit-lottery.
Tort reform - another thing Texas has going for it.
So in other words, a the doctors and staff can totally screw up with a cancer patients during chemotherapy, when for example the chemo poison to be leaked into surrounds tissues, sending patients back into the hospital for days, causing delayed chemo treatments, unknown future issues, big time stress, etc...
Many folks NOT having serious exposure to the medical community will claim medical malpractice lawsuits are all spurious.
More doctors should be sued. There is a reasons doctors mistakes top the CDC figures for death. Think of the number of mistakes that don’t end in death.
Carelessness, arrogance, lack of compassion and plain incompetence permeate the medical community and results in suffering across the country.
Boehner should immediately start a bill for TORT Reform.. to give the dumbocrats something to think about..
The Trial Lawyers would bleed all their bank accounts to stop it...
thereby robbing Obama of even more money to get re-elected..
Simple fix - if a patient’s condition doesn’t improve, the attending doctor and clinic don’t get paid. Bad doctors would be weeded out economically, and healthy economic competition would give medical professionals a reason to really try to advance medicine, rather than just going along with the pharmaceutical companies experimenting on people.
Texas has the highest tort jury verdicts in the country
Careless, arrogant and lack of compassion are excellent words to use. I was just “fired” by my ob/gyn at the end of my first trimester because they ran tests without telling me or obviously getting my permission and I had the gall to request that they pay the lab bill.
When I spoke to the office nurse manager she tried to tell me they were “required” to do the tests. And when I tried to tell her they were required to get my permission she tried the guilt trip tactic of “but don’t you want to make sure everything is ok for the baby?” After I faxed them a copy of the Florida State statutes that showed I had the right to be informed of all tests and opt out of any or all of them they said they’d pay the bill. And that day sent out a registered letter to me that they were dropping me as a client. Good riddance.
Regulatory price fixing, which inadequately compensates, creating pressure to "process" more and more patients.
You confuse "frivolous," i.e. without factual or legal basis, with "not meritorious," i.e. a jury will not award the money. A frivolous case does not get to a jury by definition.
“Simple fix” meet Unintended Consequence
With your plan [if a patient’s condition doesn’t improve, the attending doctor and clinic don’t get paid] any doctor with common sense would just refuse to take cases that didn’t have a great prognosis [that’s likely outcome to those in Rio Linda}.
That way most of their patients would get well, they and the clinic would get paid and the others, well... there’s always Obamacare Clinics, I guess.
I call dibs on all the sprained ankles and head colds.
Polite and understated. Well done.
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