This Makes Me Sick

News Roundup

Extra! Extra!  Docs Say they'll Be in Short Supply Come 2020 Read [BYU NewsNet]

Wisconsin BS? Law: Adult Kids Can't Sue For Malpractice If Parent Dies Read [WTMJ-TV]

Forget Suing Docs, The Mold That Nearly Snuffed Me Was The Builder's Fault Read [Orlando Sun-Sentinel]

Frankenstein Cometh: Grandma Claims Doc Left Bolt in Her Neck Read [Roanoke Times]

Surprise, Surprise: Tort Reform Not Keeping Docs in Land O' Lincoln Read [Courier News]

Derma-Goon, Doc Turned Lawyer, and $217 Million Verdict

Dr. Skin Cancer's Demise
Patients say doc's cancer ops left them disfigured. Turns out he was drunk on ripping off Medicare for million$ and the geezers were his pawns. Now he's in the joint. BRAVO! Read [Herald Tribune]

Gold Diggin' Law Firm?
Deposition: West Va. Doc Rick Houdersheldt said he was approached by three or four patients in 2004 who complained they had been solicited by the Charleston law firm of Curry and Tolliver to file suits against King and Putnam General Hospital. One of the patients allegedly told Houdersheldt that he had been offered $10,000 to become a plaintiff against King and Putnam General. Classy. 

Turns out the aforementioned Tolliver is a former emergency medicine doc who is now a lawyer doing med mal suits. Interesting. We'll try to get a post from him. Read [The Record]

Tampa Man Gets $217  million Med Mal Verdict
Laywers for the patient—who was left brain-damaged and disabled after hospital emergency room doctors misdiagnosed stroke symptoms—says they tried to settle with the doctors' insurance company, but were rejected. Nice chess move! Read [Houston Chronicle]

Where do we begin on this one?

'Don't Worry, We Do Thousands of These"

Last week, we put the word out that we wanted to HEAR YOUR STORIES about WHAT MAKES YOU SICK.

Well, we have heard from you. Here is a sad installment from Dennis Kruse who told us what happened to his son while under the care of Dr. Choi.

Dr. Choi: "I had some problems with Marshall's intubation and he went without oxygen for at least 15 minutes."

Kent Choi, MD, was the doctor on duty in the ICU in  June of 2005 after our son, Marshall Kruse, had surgery. Approximately 18 hours after Marshall’s surgery while in the recovery unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Mr. Choi suggested to us that, as a precautionary measure, perhaps our son should be intubated.

We discussed this with our son as well as Dr. Choi, whose  exact words to us were "DON’T WORRY WE DO THOUSANDS OF THESE".  We were then asked to leave while Kent Choi Md. performed the intubation.

Forty minutes later..... while standing in the hall at the ICU reception desk with some family friends,  Kent Choi Md casually approached us and said "I had some problems with Marshall's intubation and he went without oxygen for at least 15 minutes."

As this news sank in to all of us, I asked him if he had killed my son's brain. He simply shrugged his shoulders and said "don’t know." He then turned around and walked off leaving us standing in the hallway. We then demanded  to see our son and  were told we couldn’t, as they were cleaning him up. A short time later when we finally got in to see Marshall; he was grimacing and fighting for his life, as he sank into a coma. 

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Revenge (?), Docs on Retainer, and CPR-safe

Plastic Surgery Goes Wrong. Patient dies 'accidentally'. Or was it revenge for high school tears? Read [Herald Today]

Salt Lake Docs Practicing on Retainer Read [KSL-TV]

Texas Medical Liability Trust Declares Big Dividend, Cuts Docs A Break Read [Yahoo Finance]

Thank someone! American Heart Association says no "lay rescuer has ever been successfully sued for performing CPR." Glad that's cleared up. Read 

In Good Hands: Florida politco tackling med-mal issues also a tort claims attorney, married to a physician. Read [Times and Democrat]

Gridiron Battle

A hard-hitting high school footballer near Milwaukee collapsed after butting heads in a game. Some volunteer docs from a sports med clinic–always on hand at the field—treated the kid, concluding he had a concussion. His dad said at the time that if they weren't there he would have died. A few weeks later, he was back in the game with the blessing of said docs. And then he suffered permanent brain damage. Now his family is suing the docs and the clinic. Stay tuned for griping testimony. Read [Lake County Reporter]

Who's to blame?

Florida Delivers, Again!

I'll See Your Hand and Raise You: From the Wall Street Journal's "Law Blog," we learned about a new site where docs can learn if a potential patient is lawsuit-happy. AH, Florida, you always deliver such saucy stuff. What would we do without ya'?

Plaintiffs lawyers and medical ethics experts are up in arms, but the company that hosts the site is based in the Caribbean—lawsuit-safe it seems. The AMA's stance : “in the absence of an emergency, physicians have the right ethically [to choose] who they would elect to have as a part of their practice.”

Look for it nationwide somewhere down the road. Read about it here.

Check out some of the other choice gems we've plucked from the Sunshine State:
Patients 'dumped' from Florida ERs
Florida laws to help patients blocked by lawsuits
Florida’s swashbuckling spirit gets checked

Hollywood movies good. Lawsuit happiness bad.

Even though malpractice suits aren’t a huge problem in Singapore, Subordinate Court Justices—interesting name, eh?—are worried about following the path of other countries, i.e. the U.S. So they’re pushing for squabbling patients and docs to meet with medical experts before they go the courtroom route. Listen up. Read

Still Sorry, No Liability and Whidbey Isle Loses

Liability Linkage
1) Our friend Doug Wojcieszak is right; it helps to say ‘I’m sorry.’ As many as 80 percent of malpractice claims arise from communication breakdowns, according to a recent article in Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare. Read [Cleveland Plain Dealer]

2) Through Project Access in West Palm Beach, low-income uninsured residents can get free medical care. Nice, we like it. But can’t we come up with a better solution other than Free Care=No Doc Liability? Read [Palm Beach Post] l

3) Hat tip to DB’s Medical Rants Blog, where the editor boldly proclaims that “our current malpractice system only works as a punitive system, it does nothing to improve health care.” The heated commentary flew from there. Check it out. There’s good stuff going on in that blog. Read

4) Whidbey Island is fine residential retreat near Seattle. The views. The water. But if you need a urologist, you might be out of luck. The last one remaining, Dr. Benjamin Hu, wants Whidbey Island Hospital District to keep him afloat. The reason: Since he opened up shop in 1991, Medicare reimbursements have plummeted and his malpractice insurance premium went from $564 to $23,941 per year. Oh, yeah, there used to be five urologists on the island. Read [Whidbey News Times]

Excuse me sir, but your lawsuit is 'B.S.'

We always thought that when a court case is in the offing, it would probably be best to drop a “no comment” and let the truth come out in the courtroom. But in the present climate of spin and tabloid exploits, everyone wants to set the record straight beforehand. We wonder though if Belleville Memorial Hospital President Harry Maier should take a breath and save his outbursts in regards to a new malpractice lawsuit against one of his doctor’s. It comes on the heels of a multi-million dollar verdict. For the record, Maier said the lawsuit is "B.S." and typical of ones filed in "plaintiff's paradise." He added that the plaintiff, one Leroy Bauer, “ought to be on his knees thanking God and Memorial Hospital every day." We’re not going to investigate the lawsuit’s merits here. But we will add that this might not be the model for improving hospital/patient relations. Is it too late for mediation? Read [Madison Record]