Related posts

• Sears wheel alignment class action, cont’d (3)
• “Judge chops lawyer fees by $1M” (1)
• Yogurt marketing class action (1)
• Yes, I’m being facetious (16)
• Xbox 360 lawsuit bogus? (0)

Related posts

• Snow globe menace averted (2)
• November 22 roundup (2)
• No more ranters in the next seat? (2)
• Need for agent’s help at check-in said to be ADA violation (4)
• May 6 roundup (1)

Related posts

• Welcome Observer (UK) readers (0)
• UK: Parents liable for rented bouncy castle injury (0)
• U.K.: It’s sunny, stay inside (2)
• U.K.: defending assumption of risk (0)
• U.K.: compensation-culture roundup (1)

Related posts

• Cannon explosion kills youngster, rescue crew blamed (14)
• Whoops: “DUI attorney explains her own DUI charge” (10)
• Washington state: can parents monitor children? (2)
• Voter fraud: If Dahlia Lithwick repeats a lie often enough, maybe it will become true (14)
• Update: State not liable for assault by foster-care teens (2)

…Utter the terms “chest pain” and “trouble breathing” in the same sentence and with some doctors you’re getting a chest CT. It doesn’t matter that you have a cough, runny nose, that the chest pain is burning and only occurs when you cough, or that half the people in town have influenza because they didn’t get their flu shots. Even if bronchitis is the clinical diagnosis, there is still a 0.0001% chance that you could have a pulmonary embolism along with your bronchitis and we don’t want to miss it, because if we do, it may cause you to die and result in a lawsuit against the physician. Some doctors aren’t willing to take even the 1 in 1,000,000 chance that they’ll be sued. …

If a doctor doesn’t get every conceivable test on a patient and there is a bad outcome, then the doctor gets smacked with a lawsuit because the doctor didn’t do enough. Unless something changes, more and more patients coming to the emergency department will get megaworkups so nothing gets “missed.”

Then I read that some pompous plaintiff’s attorney said somewhere that “defensive medicine” was a myth. His theory was that if doctors do an extra test that catches a disease while it’s still treatable, then it is “good medicine,” not “defensive medicine.” Either he doesn’t get it because he is ignorant or he doesn’t get it because that attitude helps him afford his chalet in the Swiss Alps.

Medicine will never be perfect.

While on the subject, prominent health economist Uwe Reinhardt has cited our medical liability system as an important reason costs are significantly higher in the U.S. than elsewhere (PoL, Nov. 16). And KevinMD’s excellent section on defensive medicine has numerous posts in recent months we still haven’t gotten around to linking, including: guest take by “Dr. SSS” on the “two most expensive words in medicine” (”Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand if I am really treating myself or the patient.”); background on the $210 billion estimate that has been bandied about; E.R. visit + chest pains = obligatory catheterization?; quote from PandaBearMD (”Why risk our own money when we can use somebody else’s to protect us, even if it costs millions?”; a British visitor’s view of immobilization collars; don’t put the doc’s name on the chart!; and more reader reactions (”even if a patient has a good relationship with a physician and is willing to forgo various diagnostic tests, the family can decide to sue later if there is a bad outcome. … it is far easier to just order the test”)

Related posts

• Watching too many lawyer ads (1)
• “How much unnecessary testing goes on in the ER?” (8)
• Why you can’t phone the doc (7)
• When docs treat women as “pre-pregnant” (1)
• Waiting in emergency rooms (1)

Related posts

• Update: Washington family’s suit over cannon death (5)
• Whoops: “DUI attorney explains her own DUI charge” (10)
• Washington state: can parents monitor children? (2)
• Voter fraud: If Dahlia Lithwick repeats a lie often enough, maybe it will become true (14)
• Update: State not liable for assault by foster-care teens (2)

• “The accusatory legal document begins with several remarks defaming the skills, education, ability, integrity, and honesty of the physician being charged.” [Donald May, State Policy Blog] But hey, don’t take it personally, lawyers say [Mark Crane, Medical Economics] Good luck with that [Chiaramonte/Examiner, KevinMD, more]
• Law throwing open Florida doctors’ peer review to lawyers was bad enough, but now state high court has applied it retroactively to records created before law was enacted [KevinMD guest post; background at PoL here, here, and here]
• Even the New York Times hails as “sensible” laws encouraging medical apologies by making them inadmissible as evidence of wrongdoing [editorial]; but see counterexample to the usual reportage [Berlin/Am. Journal of Roentgenology via Buckeye Surgeon]
• A med-mal defense attorney says plaintiffs would win more often in proposed “health courts” than they do in the cases he handles [Medical Economics, more, and similarly]
• More evidence, this time from study of orthopedists, that docs rated as cold or callous attract far more than their proportionate share of suits [Orthopedics Today]
• EMTALA, the law forcing emergency rooms to take all comers, “has created the very conditions it sought to avoid” [Edwin Leap, M.D.O.D.] Watch for “free-standing” ERs that dodge mandate by refusing federal dollars [Scalpel or Sword?, Health Care BS] Semi-defense of law [Over My Med Body]
• Besieged state of dispersed emergency rooms and specialists is one reason for use of those risky helicopters that fly patients to the big city [Williams/Health Business Blog, M.D.O.D.]
• Docs should stand up to family members demanding futile or inappropriate end-of-life care [Musings of a Dinosaur] Relatedly, daughter on dying father: “if you give him any more morphine, I will sue you.” [Fat Doctor]

Related posts

• On C-SPAN tonight: “Protecting Main Street From Lawsuit Abuse” (3)
• October 28 roundup (3)
• New at Point of Law (4)
• June 12 roundup (16)
• July 22 roundup (5)

Related posts

• Deep pocket files: Newark police chase (20)
• Police sued over jail suicide (2)
• Police lenient? Skagit County jury: taxpayers should pay (13)
• October 2 roundup (0)
• Deep pocket files: Yong Huang v. Chicago PD (1)