Comments on: Online Blacklisting of Medical Malpractice Plaintiffs

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:44:01 +0000

Refusal to treat a patient because they exercised their right to a trial couldn’t be explained away to be anything BUT discrimination.

By: Cocoa

Cocoa — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 10:05:04 +0000

Ooops. here’s my website about blacklisting:

http://www.patientblacklisting.org

By: Cocoa

Cocoa — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 10:03:56 +0000

Blacklisting happens all the time. It doesn’t have to be on a computer. It can happen through medical records, medical gossip, and it’s quite common.

By: mikeyes

mikeyes — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:25:58 +0000

You can take this for what it is worth since I am a physician, but the article indicates 66% “medical error” and 73% compensation in those cases while a quarter of the plaintiffs received compensation when no error was present. If you assume that in order to find for the plaintiff that the tenets of negligence should be present (and in the case of OB/GYNs there is often no science to prove such, but “bad babies” need to be compensated and the deepest pockets are the doctors) if there no provable medical error you still have a 25% chance of having a malpractice suit on your record by not meeting those criteria if you are sued.

Being sued is probably the worst experience psychologically that any physician can have. I know many physicians who have altered their practices or stopped practicing due to suits and I have never met a physician who has been sued that was not traumatized in some way, including that large percentage who were exonerated.

Physicians know this and will try to avoid the experience. My wife left her practice because of such fears (OB/GYN doctors are sued an average of three times in their careers) even though there were no suits or hints of one.

So it is not surprising that these lists would occur and that the AMA (an organization I am not a member of) would consider changing the ethics code to exclude lawyers who sue them. This is not an apology for such sites, it is not that hard to find this information in many states, but lawsuits, even the ones that are settled or won, basically ruin part of your career (just try to get on insurance panels or hospital staffs with a recent suit) and the fear of lawsuits has modified many physician’s practices to the point that some patients cannot get care in some states.

By: Ray Seilie

Ray Seilie — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:53:04 +0000

How easy is it for doctors to obtain liability waivers from a patient seeking a risky operation? If it is fairly easy, and the courts are willing to enforce them, it seems like doctors would be more likely to require these waivers instead of turning patients away altogether; after all, they have every incentive to increase the number of patients they treat.

On the other hand, if these waivers are routinely ignored in civil litigation, this new database would cause more doctors to reject previous plaintiffs. In the latter case, it seems the better solution would be to enforce liability waivers and make them easier to obtain, rather than criticize the website for providing the doctors with a legal and reasonable service.

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 22:56:08 +0000

Massachusetts provides profiles of its licensed physicians on a website. In addition to basic information about education and training, the profiles include information on malpractice payments (both settlements and judgments). They list the # of payments the physician has made, the payment “category” (e.g., “Above Average”). For physicians who have made malpractice payments, the profiles also list the number of physicians in the physician’s specialty and the percentage of those physicians who have made malpractice payments. For a description of profile content, see:

http://profiles.massmedboard.org/Profiles/MA-Physician-Profile-FAQ.asp.

By: Maryland Conservatarian

Maryland Conservatarian — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 22:30:49 +0000

why is this “disturbing” and “troubling”…the NY Times publishing state secrets – that’s disturbing (to put it mildly) but this? the collection of names of people who utilize our court systems to go after doctors is probably of relevant interest to the medical profession – I would think you would be all in favor of Doctors having all the information they can gather to best assess the proper utilization of their time; esp. ob-gyns…and if this leads to less med-mal suits and less costs to doctors, we all benefit..well, all except the med-mal practioners

By: Thaddeus Pope

Thaddeus Pope — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:03:17 +0000

In response to Scott’s first comment:

A. There is typically no legal obligation for physicians to enter into a treatment relationship with a patient. The physician can refuse to treat for any reason (including because the prospective patient is litigious)so long as it is neither (i) discriminatory nor (ii) violative of EMTALA.

B. In terms of professional ethics, you have to consult the various codes. The AMA only forbids refusals to treat in emergency reasons and on the basis of gender, race, HIV status. However, when a proposal was made in 2004 to make it “not unethical” to refuse to treat plaintiff’s attorneys and their families. http://www.ama-assn.org/meetings/public/annual04/202a04.rtf The draft resolution was met with strong opposition and withdrawn, suggesting that it is unethical to refuse to treat for such a reason. The same reasoning would seem to apply to plaintiffs themselves.

By: Scott Moss

Scott Moss — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:51:31 +0000

Interesting! Two thoughts:

(1) How consistent is it with medical ethics for doctors to refuse to treat a pateint because that patient once filed one lawsuit against another doctor under completely unknown circumstances? I actually know zero about med ethics; I’m just musing out loud and would love to hear from someone who knows something about this.

(2) Dependong on how strongly LitPages “strongly encourages plaintiffs who have lost their cases at trial to turn around and sue their plaintiffs attorney,” LitPages could be liable for tortious interference. “Strongly encouraging” Client to sue Pltf’s Atty B when you know absolutely nothing about what Pltf’s Atty did… well, that sounds like a completely unfounded action undertaken just to interfere with Pltf’s Atty’s business.