Physician's First Person Account of a Malpractice Lawsuit

By John Ballard

MD Whistleblower is a blogging doctor in Ohio. He started blogging in January and only averages one post a week, but he knows his stuff and writes about himself.
His candor is refreshing. I'm taking the whole post for your reading pleasure. I have a feeling this fellow is not too worried about copyright or anything else. If he is, I'm sure we'll know about it soon enough.

I�m surprised that they haven�t thrown me out of the profession yet. In the past year alone, I have been sued for medical malpractice, committed a �never event� and confessed to performing an unnecessary medical test on a patient. It�s a wonder that my medical license hasn�t been revoked. Keep in mind that the above events are only those transgressions that I have admitted to. Imagine the misdeeds, misadventures and misconduct that I�ve kept secret. Are handcuffs in my future?

For example, I should I have come clean that a 2nd medical malpractice case was recently filed against me. I received the thick envelope from noble and altruistic Cleveland barristers about 6 weeks ago. Once again, I saw my name in the good company of many other physicians and our local hospital. I reviewed my medical records and felt comfortable with the care I had provided. In a medical malpractice case, quality of medical care is important, but the truth won�t set you free. It�s the documentation, stupid! I believe that I practice good medicine, but I know that I am an obsessive documenter. The former is important to my patients, and the latter is appreciated by my lawyer.

I had a single meeting with my attorney to review the legal preliminaries. It was clear that he had studied all of the relevant documents and was prepared. He was a senior partner at the firm and looked so much like a lawyer, that I thought he must be an actor. He donned a well tailored conservative suit and had elegant silver hair. He wore reading specs that conveyed a professorial demeanor. He was measured in his speech. Did he know any law? I hope so, but who can tell? As marketers and advertisers know, packaging is more important than the contents.

I had no clue where my standard of care may have strayed from the community standard. Only a person with a law degree can make such a determination. After all, what do we doctors know about medical quality? A physician cannot be expected to offer an authoritative opinion whether medical care is within acceptable standards as would be practiced by a reasonable and prudent physician if said physician were faced with similar clinical circumstances and knew, or should have known, that the patient, known as "Victim A", had a condition or set of conditions that within a reasonable degree of medical probability may have resulted in an adverse outcome had the physician not instituted prudent and proper medical care and treatment in accordance with established medical custom and practice. (Disclosure: Legalese concocted by the Whistleblower and may not conform to the community legal standard.)

Making a medical standard of care determination is certainly beyond the intellectual reach of a concrete thinking gastroenterologist who spends a good portion of his time in rectums. Lawyers, however, are paid handsomely to unravel such insoluble questions. So, at the close of our meeting, I asked him straight out why he thought I was being sued.

The wizened attorney thought for a minute before responding. He leaned towards me and with focused eye contact stated, �I have no idea�. That made two of us.

In Ohio, filing a medical malpractice case against a doctor requires that a physician sign an affidavit of merit, a sworn statement, attesting that the standard of care was breached. While these affidavits are generally signed in advance of filing suit, judges will give plaintiffs some latitude and permit the case to be filed if an affidavit will soon follow. I am in this window period, when the plaintiff�s attorney is trolling around the state trying to pay off one of my colleagues for a signature. I don�t think he�ll find one, even though this service can earn a physician up to $1,000 an autograph. Maybe some of these guys should be thrown out of the profession.
How does anyone credibly defend a system that targets innocent physicians routinely, vaporizes tens of billions of dollars on defensive medicine and misses the vast majority of patients who have been the victims of true negligence? If physicians performed according to these standards, we'd all be in handcuffs.

This doctor is a ray of sunshine. I read several of his other posts this year and subscribed so I don't miss any more.

Check out another story linked by a commenter about a Missouri malpractice award.

In August, a St. Louis jury awarded Dewayne and Suzanne Blankenship a $6
million verdict in the wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuit filed on
behalf of their son.

It was the largest such verdict this year, and one of the largest ever in the
city. The jury found that the hospital's doctors missed all the obvious signs
of Dylan's ailment. They didn't give him antibiotics. They didn't give him
intravenous fluids. They didn't even unzip his sleeper.

The reality of Missouri law, though, is that the Blankenships will never see
much of that money. What the jury didn't know � what they couldn't be told by
law � is that the most money that can actually be awarded for pain and
suffering in a Missouri medical malpractice case is $350,000.

I can't decide which is more entertaining, medicine or dog fighting.
Guess I'll stick with medicine. Dog fighting is illegal.