"Believe it or not, the risk of being sued for malpractice has very little to do with how many mistakes a doctor makes. Analyses of malpractice lawsuits show that there are highly skilled doctors who get sued a lot and doctors who make lots of mistakes and never get sued. At the same time, the overwhelming number of people who suffer an injury due to the negligence of a doctor never file a malpractice suit at all. In other words, patients don't file lawsuits because they've been harmed by shoddy medical care. Patients file lawsuits because they've been harmed by shoddy medical care and something else happens to them.
What is that something else? It's how they were treated, on a personal level, by their doctor. What comes up again and again in malpractice cases is that patients say they were rushed or ignored or treated poorly. "People just don't sue doctors they like," is how Alice Burkin, a leading medical malpractice lawyer, puts it. "In all the years I've been in this business, I've never had a potential client walk in and say, 'I really like this doctor, and I feel terrible about doing it, but I want to sue him.' We've had people come in saying they want to sue some specialist, and we'll say, 'We don't think that doctor was negligent. We think it's your primary care doctor who was at fault.' And the client will say, 'I don't care what she did. I love her, and I'm not suing her.'"
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/excerpts/2005-01-07-blink_x.htm
Lord
No, that's purely voluntary.
Metroguy
As in "I'm sorry, your likely going to die. The Government hasn't authorized the operation......
ruth
Don't know. Do malpractice carriers allow doctors to say, "I'm sorry?" lol I would bet not--might even be malpractice to say it.
We live in a terribly litigious society, but I have found, even as an attorney, that when you deal with your clients like humans and you allow them to view you as a caring human, you don't live in fear of law-suits, you just try hard to not make mistakes (because you care about people--unfortunately, this is a whole other kind of liability that I won't speak of here). I have agreed with that study since I first became aware of it, several years ago.
dr. h
The last few sentences are amusing because the malpractice lawyers sue EVERYONE: all docs, the nurses...you name it. Right or wrong is irrelevant. The lawyers are going after the biggest meal ticket, NOT the most negligent case. That drives the lopsided statistics. Please read the Department of Health and Human Services report on tort reform: no doctors, no lawyers, as unbiased as you will see. To answer your question, as long as we have to hide every little mistake, we will continue to protect each other (which is bad). Without a fair system, there will never be transparency.
Orignal From: Q&A: Does the current Healthcare Reform legislation include allowing Doctors to say "I'm Sorry"?
Post a Comment