- Emerging newspaper business model: copyright lawsuits against bloggers? [Kravets, Wired, Ron Coleman, TechDirt, PoL]
- Five NYC hospitals to use “health courts” to seek agreements before medical malpractice cases go to trial [WSJ]
- Serpentine asbestos politics behind “California state rock” fracas [Cal Civil Justice, more, PoL, Bailey, earlier here and here]
- From Andrew Grossman: “Feinberg: ‘priests, mayors or even sheriffs could vouch for [BP trust fund] claims of local businesses.’ Has he ever been to Miss, La.?!”
- Va. lawyer, real estate agent sanctioned for “frivolous claims supported by wild speculation” [ABA Journal]
- An injury lawyer reads and reacts to my first book, The Litigation Explosion [Alan Crede]
- Le Corbusier’s writing made him sound like certain pro se litigants [Johnson, PrawfsBlawg]
- “Tip: Photoshopping Self Into Charity Photos Not Likely to Reduce Sentence” [Lowering the Bar, more]
Posts Tagged ‘health courts’
“Nowhere is the argument over ‘over-lawyering’ more intense than in the field of medical malpractice….”
CBS Sunday Morning this weekend profiled author, lawyer and reformer (Common Good/”health courts”) Philip K. Howard. Related: Progressive Policy Institute to press health-court idea on Capitol Hill? [AP/Washington Post]
“Wasting Billions, Doing Injustice”
Stuart Taylor, Jr. on the need for malpractice reform:
Whatever the number, surveys of doctors and anecdotal evidence — even allowing for self-serving exaggeration — suggest that the occurrence [of defensive medicine] is high. A stunning 93 percent of Pennsylvania specialists in high-risk fields admitted practicing defensive medicine, according to a 2005 survey by the Journal of the American Medical Association. So did 83 percent of high-risk specialists in a 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society survey. That study also found that respondents’ fear of liability accounted for almost 30 percent of the CT scans and MRIs they ordered and had spurred 28 percent of them (including 44 percent of OB-GYNs) to avoid treating high-risk patients. …
Similar considerations explain why we already have specialized courts without juries for vaccine liability, workers’ compensation, bankruptcy, and tax cases.
(cross-posted from Point of Law)
Medical liability roundup
- “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]
(Most links via the highly recommended one-stop shop for medical blogging, KevinMD, e.g. this post and this one on EMTALA.)