What if there was a government website listing all patients

[busymom]

who don't lose weight, quit smoking or control their diabetes and therefore cause doctors to lose quality points and get dinged financially and professionally. Also, please list all patients who come to the doctor demanding an antibiotic for their virus or the new drug that they saw advertised and are sure that they need. This will help doctors to weed out undesirables.

Outrageous, isn't it?!

How about we start out by addressing Tort reform. I hear people say that it wouldn't save much money, but frankly, in our local ER doctors are forced to do CT scans now on anyone who comes in with abdominal pain instead of relying on a standard physical exam or x-ray. Incidental findings on CT that are benign then have to be investigated too. The reason these scans are done is because the climate has become so litigious that anything missed even in good faith is a sueable offense. That means hundreds of thousands of unnecessary charges to protect the odd patient who falls outside of the norm.

Please people. Think this through. If you alienate the people who study so hard and sacrifice so much to help you, then you will have won nothing.

[Oregone]

1. bleh

[glowing]

2. All businesses are at this point subject to scrutiny. I have to watch what I do and say

at a hotel.. some guest could be taping me on a cell phone, upload it to the website, and that's the face we portray to guests in the future.... even if the asshole taping was in the wrong and only uploaded the part where I had to demand that they leave the office.

Personally, I would love to have a way of checking out what other people thought and what their ratings were against some kind of measurability.. along with hospitals and cancer centers, etc, etc. Being a Dr. is a business. If we can do it to teachers, why not the Dr.s too?

[Tippy]

3. My husband does X-Rays and CT's

Tech's do not question Doctors..Some procedures do need to be questioned. How every scan done is not to protect the Dr. and the Hospital. Many are done because they are money makers..The flip side of the coin is in some case's people who file a law suits are in it for the money. Tort reform might be helpfully but, if it was you and your complaint was real as there are Dr.s and Hospitals who make errors would you take a settlement for less than you really and truly deserved? I don't have the answer. I really don't think there is one. We live in a greedy world, everyone is out to get their fair share and more. It's the more I can't handle

[busymom]

4. An ER physician, for example,

does not make money when he orders a CT scan. A radiologist makes money for reading the scan.

There are those few doctors who can get kick-backs, but my experience is that they are in the minority.

Many doctors feel frustrated by the system and by demanding patients who walk in the door and want an MRI for their back pain because their neighbor had one, etc. Patients become angry when they don't get antibiotics when they want them, demand tests and treatments, and fire their doctors when they don't get what they want even when the doctor tries to explain that the tests and treatments aren't medically necessary.

I absolutely agree that there must be accountability when it comes to physicians...but patients must be held accountable too.

[Tippy]

16. I agree there must be accountability on everyones part.

I knew of one Dr. who was getting kickbacks for prescribing oxycotin...no telling how many of her patients ended up addicted to them I know there were several

[Gman2]

5. Crimson red herring. Malpractice suits are rarely ever followed up on, and they

are very hard to win. Anyone thinking that if they arent on the hook, they will charge less is insane. Anyone who thinks that making them immune from suit will improve HC, is even more insane.

[busymom]

7. 100% wrong...

Recently, a physician here was sued for missing something on a mammogram that was NOT visible on the mammogram or u/sound itself. The tumor was so small it could not be seen with the tests. He advised the patient to return again in a month and be rechecked. Sometimes irregularities can be a part of the menstrual cycle. She sought out a surgeon who biopsied this teeny, tiny area that again... was not visible on mammogram or u/sound. It turned out to be a very small, malignant lesion in the earliest stages of growth.

She sued the ob/gyn and though she didn't win, the hospital settled out of court.

There was no negligence on the part of the physician.

There were no damages to claim because the woman was not injured in any way by the decision.

You might want to demand that the dr. should have biopsied something even if it was not visible on all testing and was so small as to be difficult to find. That, of course, would raise healthcare costs though because if you biopsied a woman's breast every time she had a teensy irregularity then you would be raking it in with unnecessary biopsies.

The hospital settled out of court simply because it was cheaper than going to court...and it kept them out of the headlines.

This shit happens all of the time...and you can bet your ass that this dr. now prescribes a biopsy for every little everything...overuse of procedures, but protection for himself.

[WinkyDink]

9. One personal example does not a refutation make. Also, no trial? Proves the point.

[Gman2]

12. And try to get a contingency lawyer for bogus case, RIGHT!

[harkadog]

17. And some poster's allegation that

"Malpractice suits are rarely ever followed up on" proves nothing too. Less than nothing since it is b.s.

[busymom]

6. Love that this has been unrec'd

People want to hold other people accountable...burn those damned doctors at the stake ... but they don't want to look at themselves and their own behavior.

You know, I actually get really sick of hearing people here whine about how doctors earn too much money, drive porsche's and BMW's etc.

My dh is a doctor and we pay out the ass in taxes. We have very little savings, no college fund for our kids, live within in our means and drive used cars (not BMW's, btw). I have a VW van that is almost 10 years old that has been paid off for 2 years. It is full of dings and dents and scratches, has 170,000 miles on it and I will drive it until the wheels fall off. With all of the student loans we are paying back, we can't afford the car payment on another used car right now.

My husband goes into the hospital at all hours of the day and night to see people with and without health insurance. He is one of the smartest, kindest people that I know and he works hard and has made many sacrifices to get to this point in his career. The sacrifices have been financial (again, very little retirement or savings) and emotional (missing out on years of family time when our children were little to work 100 hours/week as a resident).

We don't have a problem paying our plumber for his work...I don't try and negotiate costs if he comes at 2am becuase the pipes break. I pay it. And...it isn't cheap.

People here love to rip on doctors and it is outrageous. You have no idea how driven they are to help, how much they give up and sacrifice and what a long and hard road it is to become a doctor.

It's really sad.

Go rip on the elite baseball and basketball players...on famous actors/actresses who are making unfathomable amounts of money. Demand that Oprah give back her millions, that the president work for 50,000/yr while paying on 150,000 + in school loans.

[Mika]

10. Thank you for posting that!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:


I get emergency calls at all hours 24/7. Phooey on me, I'm at the office now waiting for an emergency pt to show up with a busted up mouth.

Also, I drove my old Altima to the office.



:hi:

---

[busymom]

13. sadly, too many people just don't get it...

They are demanding, want to be seen immediately, talk to their physician immediately (even in the middle of busy clinic hours), want all tests and procedures to be done and covered whether they are deemed medically necessary or not by their physician and then want you to work for peanuts.

Hope your day looks up!

[WinkyDink]

8. Because access to redress is important. Basic. Not only for the rich.

[PBS Poll-435]

11. Tort Reform?!?

:rofl:

[HillGal]

14. We need to address the dwindling numbers of OB's, there are way too many who are

giving up the OB part of their practice and just sticking with the GYN part.

[busymom]

15. It's too expensive to carry malpractice in many places...

sadly, things go wrong when babies are born. When they go wrong, they can go wrong very quickly and it isn't always within the power of the doctor to save the day. They always take the blame though when things turn out badly...even if they couldn't have prevented it.