Greedy Trial Lawyer
Virtual Housecalls May Require Virtual Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Category: Torts For Our Time
After totally eliminating house calls (what's that?) from the practice of medicine doctors, hospitals and insurance companies are embracing virtual house calls and virtual rounding. The latter, for some reason, is really taking off in children's hospitals.
I believe this will lead to gigabytes of virtual malpractice and, with a little creativity, to virtual malpractice lawsuits and trials. I may be able to sit in my underwear in front of my monitor and virtually sue the bastards. The marvels of technology!.
Attorneys Gear Up for Suits Over 'Virtual Medicine' is the National Law Journal's virtual alert to the perils of being diagnosed and treated in less time than it can take to say breach of the standard of care.
Critics say the legal system has not kept pace with online diagnoses and other technological advances in medicineThe number of doctors and hospitals making virtual house calls has exploded in recent years, which has lawyers cautioning the medical community about the legal dangers of treating and monitoring patients via the Internet.
Attorneys warn that virtual medicine -- which has popped up in hospitals and clinics in more than a dozen states in the last two years -- could open the floodgates to malpractice claims, privacy disputes and licensure problems.
"My concern is that this would open up lawsuits," said attorney Brett C. Powell of Hicks & Kneale in Miami, who handles malpractice appeals for doctors and plaintiffs. "I can foresee a claim down the road where the patients are claiming negligence for failing to recognize a situation. With these virtual house calls ... you could say not only did he not have an adequate examination, but he didn't even see me."
Lawyers' concerns stem not only from the increase in doctors participating in virtual medicine, but by the growing number of insurance carriers that have been willing to pay for online visits.
Lawyers, meanwhile, are ambivalent about what they're seeing on the medical front. "I've seen a burst of activity in the last 18 months," said Sharon Klein, a partner at Philadelphia's Pepper Hamilton who specializes in health care law.
The nation's legal system, however, has not kept pace with the technological advances regarding virtual house calls, cautioned Klein, who notes that remote caregiving raises concerns about malpractice claims, privacy, confidentiality and security-of-communication claims, as well as about the practice of medicine across state lines. In the last 18 months, Klein has counseled many hospitals in the practice of "virtual rounding," where doctors and specialists check on their patients from remote locations with the help of digital images displayed on computers. She said that it has become a particularly popular practice in children's hospitals.
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