As mentioned Nov. 22, the New Yorker recently published an article on the medical liability morass by its medicine correspondent, Dr. Atul Gawande. The piece still isn’t online (sorry) but Common Good has posted a summary of the article with some quotes, as well as a link to coverage in the Dec. 20 Medical Post.
Update: Atul Gawande on “The Malpractice Mess”
As mentioned Nov. 22, the New Yorker recently published an article on the medical liability morass by its medicine correspondent, Dr. Atul Gawande. The piece still isn’t online (sorry) but Common Good has posted a summary of the article with some quotes, as well as a link to coverage in the Dec. 20 Medical Post.
2 Comments
Gawande appears to believe that doctors “won’t take responsibility” since they won’t talk to family members about bad outcomes, presumably because they’re just bad people, when in reality doctors have no incentive to be candid about bad outcomes and their hand in them, if any, because honesty isn’t a bar to litigation. If anything it’s evidence for the plaintiff.
Bob is spot on – and the bit at the end about a “small investigation”, etc, etc, falls into the same trap.