Interview summary: these are good times for medical malpractice insurance companies in Pennsylvania.

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Most infections are not the result of hospital malpractice. But consider these facts. In Central New York, University Hospital had, according to one study, an infection rate of 0.669 percent. Other New York Hospitals had lower rates: St. Joseph's and Crouse had infection rates of 0.405 percent and 0.364 percent, respectively. But Community General's infection rate was 0.017 percent and Oswego’s rate was absolutely zero.

Now, hospital quality data is not standardized and there are different reports that measure hospitals in different ways. But can this degree of variance in hospital infection rates be the product of mere probability or the way the hospitals report the data? I don't think so.

Many states, most notably Pennsylvania, are taking great steps to collect and report data on hospital-acquired infections. These are just steps in the right direction. Hospital patients have a right to know whether a hospital in which they might receive care and treatment is diligent in the prevention of hospital-acquired infections.

The idea behind medical malpractice tort reform in Texas was that doctors would flock to Texas to take advantage of lower medical malpractice premiums. That has not happened.

In recap, the data demonstrate that juries treat physicians very fairly, perhaps with too much deference. Given the limits of human capacity to reconstruct past events and the inevitable subjectivity of judgments about the quality of past performance, it is probably not possible to design a fault-based adjudication system that will have a substantially higher agreement rate in the cases with weak evidence of negligence. At most, modest improvements may be possible through careful refinements of trial procedure and the supervision of expert witnesses. As a consequence, both piecemeal reforms and more fundamental alternatives to malpractice litigation should not be driven by the mistaken assumption that juries treat physicians unfairly. Although the current system of resolving malpractice claims has many shortcomings, neither randomness nor favoritism toward injured patients is among them.

One medical malpractice study found that 12% of the time, cancer is misdiagnosed because a doctor or other health care provder either missed the signs and symptoms of cancer and did not order further testing or because the cancer test was improperly excecuted, read, or an error was made with at the lab or with the radiologist. With breast cancer patients, mammograms have a false-negative - malignant cancer that goes undetected- rate of approximately 10%.

First, I grant you, this is old data. But, if anything, medical costs rising a lot faster than malpractice verdicts, which are reported to be falling in many jurisdictions (for example, Texas). Doctors claim defensive medicine costs are not included in this number. But I've always said I think most doctors do what is best for the patient as opposed to worrying about malpractice lawsuits. And a lot of "defensive medicine" is just good medical care.

Plaintiff went to his workers' compensation doctor who found increased ferritin in his blood, an indication of hemochromatosis. No diagnosis was made. Three years later, the diagnosed with hemochromatosis. Alleging tissue and organ damage, arthritis and memory loss, Valentine said that Kramer failed to diagnose and treat his hemochromatosis, failed to refer him to a specialist and failed to discuss the lab results with him. The workers' compensation doctor alleged that he showed the Plaintiff the lab results and told him to see a primary care doctor.

No one talks about this tragedy: victims who cannot bring a malpractice lawsuit only because the economics of medical malpractice cases do not allow lawyers to take cases where the injuries are not extreme.

The article includes a very poorly worded quote from medical malpractice lawyer: "What are her losses -- maybe $50,000? I can't afford to take a case that recovers $50,000. My expenses would likely be more than the recovery. She's out of luck." True statement, I guess. Awful way to put it.

This underscores that how important it is to have radiologist reading mammograms that know how to and having equipment that gives you the best possible reading.

By the way, this is ostensibly from a medical doctor. Which makes me wonder why all of the advertisments and, in particular, the survey as to whether women hate sex. New rule: no more commenting on blogs that have advertisements and surveys like this.

Of course, that does not mean that noneconomic damage caps are just. Requiring the wrongdoer to pay full compensation for harm caused is the sign of a civilized society.

You can find a copy of the study here.

Doctors also seeks approval to increase its “claims-free” discount for California doctors from 12.5% to 17.5% for certain surgical specialties, including general surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, thoracic/cardiovascular surgery and even plastic surgery.