Greedy Trial Lawyer
I Plead Guilty To Making Bad Doctors Paranoid
Category: In Your Face
People like me are responsible for the following falling dominoes: filing medical malpractice lawsuits against emergency room physicians, creating litigation paranoia among ER physicians, resulting in the practice of defensive medicine by cover-your-ass ER docs, who order costly medical testing and care. That is the indictment filed by Chris Rangel on his medical blog.
If anybody cares about the response of this greedy trial lawyer - I plead guilty as charged.
How Defensive Medicine Changes the Practice of Medicine.
Emergency physicians are well known in the medical profession to be paranoid about litigation. And well they should be. Emergency medicine docs are among such litigation high risk specialties as obstetricians and neurosurgeons. There is every reason to believe (and some evidence) that this paranoia alters how these physicians practice medicine and not necessarily for the better.The practice of emergency medicine (among other high risk specialties) has become so regimented and infused with defensive medicine tactics that many ER docs are not even aware of how this has changed the way they think.
Medical malpractice attorneys are not directly at fault for this mess. But I don't see this problem correcting itself as long as physicians feel that the current tort system is a disincentive to changing from a mostly CYA (Cover Your Ass) system to one which couples good medical care to proper resource utilization. However, tort lawyers tend to oppose every single reform attempt and so in my book, if they are not part of the solution, then they are part of the problem.
From RangelMD.com
Not only am I guilty as charged, but I have every intention to continuing filing a lawsuit whenever a patient is seriously injured as a result of improper, unacceptable, substandard medical care. In my book, Dr. Chris, it is the job of the medical profession to pursue every single reform of the medical delivery system in order to do no harm in emergency rooms. Stop trying to blackmail the victims of medical malpractice into giving ER doctors a pass in order to remedy their paranoia. If ER doctors are paranoid about potential medical malpractice claims it is because they have earned it.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.greedytriallawyer.com/admin/mt-tb.cgi/721
Comments
I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this. I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts on the other part of Dr. Chris's statement - the "proper resource utilization". I am not an attorney or medical professional, just a SAHM who has had a few miserable experiences waiting for ER services. Personally I'd like my doctors to order any extra tests that might help my family members - but we economize in other areas so we can pay for them, get regular check-ups, try to live healthy lives etc. Based on what I've seen in ER waiting rooms, it is my opinion that there is room for improvement in ER resource utilization.
Posted by: Melanie at September 28, 2007 02:24 PM