“A transsexual who spent ?60,000 on surgery to become a woman is suing her doctor after claiming that he misdiagnosed her with gender dysphoria.” Samantha Kane, 44, of Newcastle-under-Tyne, England, had been a millionaire property owner and father of two named Sam Hashimi until deciding to change his gender in an operation seven years ago. Now Kane says she does not enjoy living as a woman and misses the parts of her body that were cut off. She is suing consultant psychiatrist Dr Russell Reid, saying he advised her improperly and should never have permitted the operation. (Helen Nugent, “Sex-change woman sues over ‘terrible mistake'”, London Times/Gender Trust, May 27).
Posts Tagged ‘medical’
West Virginia M.D.s
…won the enactment of far-reaching liability reform in their state last year. How they did it (“The story of tort reform in West Virginia”, David A. Kappel, M.D., Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, May (PDF)). See also “Malpractice Liability in West Virginia” (survey), U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, Nov. 19, 2002 (PDF); American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Ob-Gyns Praise West Virginia’s New Law On Medical Liability Reform” (press release), Mar. 19, 2003. For the other side’s views, see Public Citizen, Jul. 9, 2003, and Stephanie Mencimer, “Malpractice Makes Perfect”, Washington Monthly, Oct. 2003 (& see Howard Kurtz, “Fox’s Middle Man”, Washington Post, Apr. 5 on publishing history of last-named piece, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award although the New Republic had “rejected it as flawed after a couple of rounds of rewriting”).
Vindicated — and violated
One day before the statute of limitations would have expired, a doctor is sued over a patient’s post-surgical complications. She is in for a shock. “Before this case, I’d never realized that we have a system of law where one person can stand up in a public forum and assassinate someone else’s character without a single piece of substantiating evidence (known in legalese as ‘closing arguments’). He faces no consequences for doing this. He isn’t even expected to apologize. We have a system of law that requires the witnesses to tell the whole truth, but then encourages attorneys to manipulate and hide that truth.
“I know that most of my friends will tell me to ‘get over it.’ They’ll tell me that I shouldn’t worry about what the jury thinks of me — I’ll never see these people again. They’ll tell me that the only important thing is that I won.” Trouble is, “I don’t feel like I won; I feel like I have been violated.” (Patricia I. Carney, “Our system lives on personal attacks”, Medical Economics, May 7).
Pennsylvania obstetrics
Consider having your baby somewhere else: hit hard by the state’s malpractice crisis, the “five-county Philadelphia region [lost] 25 percent of its staffed OB beds between 1993 and 2003, according to Delaware Valley Healthcare Council President Andrew Wigglesworth. Within the past 18 to 24 months, he says, the region lost 10 hospital OB departments, including those at MCP, Methodist, Nazareth, Warminster, Mercy Fitzgerald, Episcopal and Elkins Park; while OB services were also lost from hospital closures including City Line, Sacred Heart in Norristown and Community Hospital in Chester.
“Liability issues have put extraordinary pressure on OB programs in southeastern Pa., while well over 50 percent of practicing obstetricians in the region, perhaps closer to 75 percent, have become employees whose liability coverage is paid for by hospitals, says Wigglesworth, who adds that the trend toward employed OB status in southeastern Pa. has accelerated over the past three and a half years. ‘It is clear that, without the intervention of hospitals to employ and cover obstetricians in the region, we would have an extraordinary crisis, in terms of availability of OB services,’ he says…
“Wigglesworth [notes] that liability costs alone have approached two-thirds of the reimbursement level. …’Surviving’ OB programs in the region are mostly represented by teaching hospitals, including Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), Pennsylvania Hospital, Einstein, Hahnemann, Jefferson and Temple.” (Christopher Guadagnino, “Obstetrician scarcity in Pennsylvania”, Physicians News Digest, May)(via Donna Rovito) (& letter to the editor Aug. 16).
Parked outside the emergency room…
…and in the physician-only parking area, no less, this lawyer’s van seen at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center. (Pics #1 and #2 at EMedConcepts, May 6) (via Gross Anatomy). We wonder about that hydrant in pic #1, too. More: a reader directs our attention to the website maintained by the van’s owner, the Law Office of John Dearie & Associates, which includes a page on the “mobile law office” and a reprint of a Dec. 26, 2001 New York Times article about it. Further: welcome Fark visitors (see May 20); and one observer speculates that the lawyer might have scheduled a deposition at the hospital, a theory about which we are skeptical (see Yclipse, May 18, with comment from me); see also Chris Rangel, May 19. More: Jan. 21, 2005 (TV show adapts idea), Jun. 5, 2005 (law firm’s side of story).
“Liability crisis ends century of deliveries”
Human interest: Family physicians Jim Schwieterman M.D., and Tom Schwieterman M.D., who are brothers, are “scheduled to deliver their last baby in September, stopping a more than 100-year run of their family bringing children into the world in Mercer County, Ohio.” Their practice in the rural town of Maria Stein dates back to their great-grandfather, and has never had a lawsuit payout. But obstetrics is a high-risk field legally speaking: their insurance company “was asking for $80,000 for the brothers to keep delivering the 60 or so babies a year that they average”, up 150% or so from six years ago. “And given how long their family has been in the community, neither wanted to move 20 miles west to Indiana where tort reform is established and rates would have been 75% less.” The brothers will continue in medical practice aside from obstetrics. (Tanya Albert, American Medical News (AMA), May 3).
“Patients Die as Doctors Fear Malpractice”
Neurosurgeons are reducing their litigation risk by refusing to see emergency patients, and the results can be fatal. (FoxNews.com, Apr. 25).
One less Illinois doctor
“Dr. Eileen Murphy has been delivering babies for 18 years, including Governor [Rod] Blagojevich’s daughter, Anne. But on April 30 she’ll see her last patient. She just can’t afford to do it anymore. … The problem’s not her $170,000 a year salary. It’s her insurance premium which jumped to $138,000 this year. Without insurance she can’t get hospital privileges. ‘If anything goes wrong, even if it’s a possible complication, a possible natural outcome, you can almost guarantee that you are going to be sued,’ Murphy said.” (“Doctors Protest Malpractice Rates”, CBS 2 Chicago, Mar. 24). Murphy plans to become a junior high school teacher instead, according to news reports. “I am going on strike for tort reform,” she wrote in a letter to her patients. More: Spoons Experience, Capitol Grilling bulletin board. Even more: Chicago Tribune on state’s crisis (“The doctors are leaving”, Apr. 18) (editorial); Maureen Martin, Heartland Institute, Mar. 26; Patrick J. Powers, “Doctor laments loss of friends to other states”, Belleville News-Democrat, Jan. 14.
The Hartford Courant on Apr. 4 (reg) ran a guest commentary by an attorney named Henry Kopel (“My Colleagues Are Wrecking Health Care”) who is married to an obstetrician/gynecologist and who begins his column: “I am an attorney, and I am ashamed of what my profession is doing to health care in America.” (reprinted: Connecticut College of Emergency Physicians). And here are a couple more medical-liability sites we haven’t previously noted: Doctors for Medical Liability Reform (various physician specialty groups), Protect Access to Care & Treatment (American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons).
Med mal: around the blogs
Not that this exactly qualifies as news, but Sen. Tom Daschle says things to pro-tort-reform constituents back home that are rather different from what he says in Washington, notices the South Dakota Politics blog (Apr. 4, Apr. 7). And the departure of a surgeon in MedPundit Sydney Smith’s home town, coinciding with a particularly obdurate sound bite from ATLA-admired Sen. Patrick Leahy, prompts her (Apr. 10) to give the Vermont Democrat an Open Secrets look-up (see also MedRants, Apr. 8, with comments section). Dr. Smith also notes (Apr. 6) that the med-mal crisis in famed Madison County, Ill., may play a role in the contemplated closure of Scott Air Force Base in Belleville.
M.D.s in the dock
The AMA’s American Medical News takes the reader inside a Chicago malpractice trial in which Dr. Rose Diakos was sued for performing a tubal ligation which failed to prevent a patient’s pregnancy. The case resulted in a defense verdict, in part because the plaintiff’s expert witness came across quite badly, and the doctor learned at least one lesson: document her patient interviews with lots and lots of notes in future to protect herself (Tanya Albert, “One physician’s malpractice battle: Dr. Diakos on trial”, Mar. 22-29). Chris Rangel of RangelMD has some further thoughts on expert witnesses (Mar. 14). Psychologist Dan Shapiro, who specializes in counseling doctors, has written a book (“Delivering Doctor Amelia“) recounting his attempts to help a talented young ob/gyn who suspends her practice amid feelings of worthlessness and failure; the trigger for her doing so is the birth of a baby with cerebral palsy to one of her patients, with attending lawsuit (description in NYU Literature, the Arts and Medicine Database) (via MedPundit). And the Pennsylvania Medical Society has published comments by eight doctors-to-be explaining why they do not intend to set up practice in the litigation-wracked Keystone State (“The Medical Resident Diaries — Why They?re Leaving“).