- Defense medico-legal expert sees 1,000+ cases a year, testimony infuriates NYC judge [Eric Turkewitz: first, second, third, overview posts]
- More commentary on Supreme Court’s generic drug pre-emption case, Mutual v. Bartlett [James Beck, more, Michael Krauss, earlier]
- New JAMA paper, “The Looming Threat of Liability for Accountable Care Organizations and What to Do About It” [Bill of Health]
- “Obamacare and Activist State Courts Drive Up Health Plan Costs” [Hans Bader, CEI “Open Market”]
- New York: emergency medical technicians protected by sovereign immunity principles [Alex Stein, Bill of Health]
- “A New FDA for the Age of Personalized, Molecular Medicine” [Peter Huber, Manhattan Institute via Alex Tabarrok]
- From an unexpected source? Left-leaning Center for American Progress publishes report on reducing cost of defensive medicine by Ezekiel Emanuel et al. Meanwhile, trial lawyers trumpet study of veterans’ hospitals they say undercuts defensive medicine case [client-recruitment site AboutLawsuits.com] And in the UK: “13,000 died needlessly at 14 worst NHS trusts” [Telegraph]
Filed under: defensive medicine, emergency services, expert witnesses, FDA, medical malpractice, New York, ObamaCare, pharmaceuticals, United Kingdom
One Comment
From the Ezekiel Emanual et. al. article:
“there is a right way and a wrong way to reduce the costs of defensive medicine.”
Just one of each? How . . . symmetrical.
But the article then proceeds to describe what seem to me two wrong ways; wrong because they each involve a significant amount of arbitrary straitjacketing
1. Cap on malpractice awards
2. Safe harbor for physicians who meticulously follow and do not depart from “standards”.
#1 straitjackets the patient. Even Emanuel et al. don’t like that.
#2 straitjackets physicians. It sounds like cookbook medicine to me. That is apparently not what Emanuel et. al. intend, but there can be no assurance that cookbook medicine wouldn’t rapidly emerge once such a safe harbor were enacted into law. Even I don’t like that.
But the article also says that the guidelines must: “Consider . . . patient preferences as appropriate.” Doesn’t that allay my worry? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t tell me who will consider my preferences; or who will actually decide what is “appropriate” – my physician? The committee that wrote the standards? The government bureaucrats who wrote the regulations implementing the legislation? A judge?
No, I don’t like this because I still expect my physician to treat me as a unique human patient, not as some sort of average mammal with a heart beat. Averages mislead; on average, Americans have one ovary and one testicle. Is it not still true that that averages have no clinical meaning?