An article in Archives of Internal Medicine (2009;169(12):1123-1129) reveals that about 1 in 14 abnormal outpatient test results are either not reported to the patient or the report to the patient is not documented. The article summarizes a study consisting "of a retrospective medical record review of 5434 randomly selected patients aged 50 to 69 years in 19 community-based and 4 academic medical center primary care practices."
Read an abstract of the article here.
A Tennessee lawyer who purports to have knowledge and experience in Tennessee medical malpractice law recently wrote a blog post that advised the pubic about statutes of limitations in medical malpractice cases. His post was wrong, and it was obvious to me that he was unaware of the legislation passed in June and that went into effect on July 1, 2009.
Now, you might say, "well John, don’t be a jerk. The law has only been in effect for a little over a month." Sorry folks, in my opinion that doesn’t cut it. If you hold yourself out as having knowledge in a given area of law you have the responsibility to keep yourself reasonably current in that area. The proposed changes to the medical malpractice law have been talked about by those actively involved in the field for months before the legislation was signed by the Governor. The Tennessee Association for Justice list-serves have had numerous posts about the subject. I wrote several blog posts on the issue (here, here, and here.). I wrote a cover-story article for the July 2009 TBA Journal on the changes. In short, there were plenty of opportunities to learn that the law was changing and that it had in fact changed.
I don’t expect every lawyer to keep up with all changes in the law – that is impossible. I don’t expect every personal injury and wrongful death lawyer to keep up with changes in medical malpractice law, for the simple reason that many of these lawyers do not do medical malpractice law. I don’t expect anyone to keep all the details of law in his or her head even in a relatively narrow field like medical malpractice. And of course I am not saying that everyone who does tort work in Tennessee must read this blog.
The "Dead By Mistake" website, hosted by the San Francisco Chronicle, contains chilling stories of deficiencies in our health care system that result in injury and death. This alone brings the point home: more people die each month from preventable medical errors than died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Quite frankly, this is all old news to lawyers who are involved in medical malpractice litigation. This site will educate those lawyers who do not regularly do this work. It will inform consumers and legislators of the nature and extent of the problem. And, for those of us who do this work everyday, it will remind us of how important it is that we work as hard as we can to hold health care providers responsible for the harm they cause.
Those of us who do medical malpractice work are familiar with Occam’s Razor, the common understanding of which (as stated on Wikipedia) is that "of several acceptable explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest is preferable, provided that it takes all circumstances into account."
Those of us who do medical malpractice work are also familiar with the the following litigation tactic often employed by our brothers and sisters of the defense bar, known as Blore’s Razor: "Given the choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier." (from Michael Moncur’s (Cynical) Quotations).
This is the fourth in a series of posts that addresses new laws of interest to Tennessee tort lawyers. For other changes go to the Legislation 2009 category of this blog.
Those of us who keep an eye on the Tennessee General Assembly know that there is an ongoing battle over whether hospitals will be permitted to employ physicians. As of now, hospitals can employ hospitalists but they cannot employ ER doctors, anesthesiologists, radiologists, etc.
The renal dialysis clinics have cracked the door open slightly and won the right to employ doctors under certain circumstances. This will be of interest to medical malpractice lawyers, who will need to explore the vicarious liability of clinics for the acts of nephrologists and others caring for ESRD patients. The law will also be of interest to those representing such doctors, in tort as well as contract litigation.
That is what Tennessee’s own Jim Hall called for in today’s New York Times. An excerpt from Jim’s op-ed piece:
Because American medicine accepts error as an inevitable consequence of treatment, our hospitals, insurers and government do little to respond to unnecessary deaths. If we are to address the problem in a serious manner, we must first change this culture.
Jim is the former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Read the entire op-ed piece here.
This post is a first in a series of posts that will address new laws passed by the 106th General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Bredesen. The posts will run two or three days per week over the next several weeks.
The first post is a change to the Tennessee Peer Review Law of 1967. The bill will be of interest to any one who does medical malpractice or any other area of health care law.
Here is a summary of the legislation:
I have released three prior posts on the financial condition of State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company – click here to read them: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
The bottom line is that conservative financial management at SVMIC has permitted the company to accumulate a quarter of a billion dollars in net worth, even as the number of policyholders has declined 4% of the last year.
So how is that impacting rates?
Last Friday a Memphis jury awarded almost $24M to a woman and her husband in a civil suit arising out of what the jury found to be medical negligence arising from the failure to promptly diagnose breast cancer. The woman is in the last weeks of her shortened life.
It is my understanding that the defendant did not make a settlement offer and in fact that the doctor refused to authorize any offer. I do not know if this is correct. I do not know if the case could have been settled. I do know it is hard to make progress on settlement negotiations if one side or the other refuses to discuss settlement.
Many insurance companies that provide professional liability coverage to physicians give the physician the right to refuse to consent to any settlement. This is unlike traditional liability insurance coverage, where the insured may be given the opportunity to voice an opinion on settlement but rarely has any power to block a settlement within policy limits.
This is the third post about State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company’s 2008 financial results. Click on the links to see Part 1 and Part 2.
New malpractice claims asserted against SVMIC insureds dropped 2.5% in 2008. The company reports that 83% of all cases were resolved in favor of it’s policyholders on a company-wide basis.
(One of the things I frequently address at seminars for young lawyers is the evaluation of potential medical negligence cases. I tell them that the best way to make money on medical malpractice cases is to refuse to represent the next ten people who call asking the lawyer to represent them in a medical malpractice case. Obviously, that is ridiculous, but the fact remains that SVMIC "wins" almost 9 out of 10 cases. A fair number of those cases are filed by lawyers who do not have the experience to recognize a bad case from a good case..)
Day on Torts