You suffer an injury and need surgery. You have to rely on your surgeon to play it straight with you. Besides a second opinion, never a bad idea, what else can you do? Far down on your list of fears: not getting the surgery the doctor tells you that you…
The strict locality rule requires doctors to apply the standard of care specific to the community in which the medical care was given. This doctrine began after the Civil War where courts were loathe to apply the same standards to country doctors as they would to urban doctors that have…
The National Practitioner Data Bank (for short: NPDB) is an electronic repository containing doctors’ malpractice settlements and judgments that the feds have maintained for 15 years. It also includes adverse peer review actions against licenses, clinical privileges, and professional society memberships of physicians and other health care providers and Medicare…
Unless you are in the health care profession or dealing with the health care profession, it is hard to appreciate the deference given to medical records. Doctors believe – correctly in most cases – that looking at a patient’s medical records can tell you exactly what should come next in…
Baltimore Washington Medical Center must pay a fine after giving a patient an improper dose of radiation last year. The Glen Burnie hospital was fined by the Maryland Department of Environment which, surprisingly, enforces radiation management regulations. BWMC recently reached the $14,000 settlement agreement with the state for the improper…
The number of Pennsylvania malpractice lawsuits dropped for the sixth – please think about that for a second: sixth – consecutive year in 2010. The total number of malpractice lawsuits crashed from 2904 in 2002 to 1,491 last year. Of the malpractice cases that went to a jury last year…
I always like to point out that you don’t see lawyers trying to get lawyer specific dispensation to lower malpractice premiums for lawyers. I don’t like paying malpractice premiums but, unlike many doctors, I’m not suggesting special consideration. I think it is crazy doctors want a special exceptions – lawyers…
This is not a space to praise the virtues of malpractice insurance companies. But let’s give credit to Crico/RMF a malpractice insurance company which insures Harvard-affiliated hospitals. Crico/RMF, according to the Wall Street Journal, put on an emergency medicine leadership summit to identify the critical factors that cause missed or…
DEA agents tell a Maryland doctor he can no longer prescribe medication. As they are leaving he shouts: Your mothers wanted you to become physicians and because you didn’t, they are mad at you. So you are mad at physicians and are arresting all physicians in the area. Later, things…
Premises liability claims make up 8% of nursing home cases. So while these claims are “nursing home cases” in one sense, they are really premises liability cases in nursing homes. This may come with nursing home specific fact patterns, but they are still premises liability claims. You can get an…