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A doctor faces a long, and almost certainly, emotional jury trial. And the doctor wins. Does this mean the doctor can put the incident to bed? The answer is usually, but not necessarily.

A jury’s finding that a doctor did not commit medical malpractice does not control a decision of the Maryland State Board of Physicians in a disciplinary proceeding under the Maryland Medical Practice Act. Accordingly, the Board can ignore a malpractice jury verdict in making the decisions it does.

  • Does the Maryland Board of Physicians Protect the Public? (Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog post)
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Interesting statistics from the Green Bay Press Gazette (and here we thought Green Bay was just a football team, not a town) today:

    • Over the last 30 years, the number of health insurance bureaucrats has grown 25 times faster than the number of doctors — people involved in such non-health-related tasks as marketing, processing bills and denying benefits
    • In 2006, the six largest insurance companies pulled in $11 billion in profits. New medical treatments, such as coronary bypass surgery and neonatal intensive care that is saving extremely premature babies; increased use of medical services — some of it unnecessary; new technology such as echocardiograms and CT scans; and expensive drugs that often are no better than older generic drugs are significant causes of escalating health-care costs
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Sometimes, lawyers or potential clients will ask for a Maryland medical malpractice lawyer who focuses on dental malpractice cases. I laugh. No malpractice lawyers focus on dental malpractice cases. Why? Typically, the damages are insignificant. This was not the problem in a South Carolina malpractice lawsuit that went to verdict last week.

A 25-year-old female plaintiff claimed she chipped an upper front tooth and went to Sexton Dental Clinic in Florence for treatment. Most medical malpractice attorneys reading this story expect that the doctor made a mistake that caused patient harm, but not the type of injury that would justify a medical malpractice lawsuit. Well, the doctor came in and pulled all 16 of her upper teeth without looking at the treatment plan or obtaining her permission. The dentist then allegedly altered the patients’ medical records to create the appearance that the patient had consented to having more than three teeth pulled.

This is a real problem for a defendant’s medical malpractice lawyer. But this dentist was just getting started. Defendant’s attorney conceded in an opening statement that some number of teeth had been pulled without the plaintiff’s consent, but that it had been a mistake. But the doctor went all in. He claimed that there had been no mistake and that he had pulled all 16 teeth without looking at the agreed-upon treatment plan and without first obtaining the plaintiff’s consent. This makes no sense.

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This from the Kansas City Star on the illusory relationship between health care costs and medical malpractice lawsuits:

Yet the push for tort reform rests largely on anecdotal evidence of the occasional large jury verdict or outrageous lawsuit. Despite the perception that “jackpot justice” has fueled soaring costs, hard data yield a much different picture.

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The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog offers thoughts on when to serve interrogatories. The argument that interrogatories should filed contemporaneously with the complaint applies to medical malpractice cases but with less force. The question is going to hinge on the facts, potential defenses, and other tactics specific to that malpractice lawsuit.

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The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog provides links today to summaries of Maryland malpractice law for medical malpractice lawyers, information on the Maryland malpractice damage cap, and a sample malpractice certificate of merit and expert report.

 

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Write an editorial about medical malpractice. Logic and reason: optional. Just write something. Check out this gem from the Miami Herald:

One aspect of the high price of health care and a lot of waste has been overlooked. That is the outrageous cost of malpractice insurance that doctors pay even if they are competent, responsible and the least likely to be sued.

I am not a doctor or married to a doctor, but I think this cost, along with the debts for their education, must be a huge burden. I do not think that doctors go through what they do to be doctors to become rich. There would be an easier way. However, I do believe that doctors order many extra and very expensive tests, not only to avoid a malpractice suit but to earn extra money to pay for that huge insurance cost.

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Former New England Patriots defensive back Tebucky Jones has filed a medical malpractice lawsuit claiming Patriots team doctors, and another doctor failed to diagnose his career-ending 2006 preseason knee injury, effectively ruining his pro career.

Jones’ malpractice lawyers can expect a prompt motion for summary judgment claiming the players’ collective bargaining agreement with the NFL requires that these claims be subject to arbitration and, oh by the way, the statute of limitations for claims against a team under the CBA is 90 days.

I won this exact motion in a medical malpractice case against the New England Patriots. The Patriots settled after we won the motion. But the facts of my case were different because the team waited an incredible two years to file the motion claiming the CBA defeated Plaintiff’s claim. The judge seemed to rely upon this waiver argument in her ruling.

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Yesterday, on the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, I wrote about the clear plan doctors have of writing as many editorials as possible about medical malpractice. This editorial from Fredericksburg, Virginia fails to follow the ‘talk about defensive medicine’ talking point because the author is too focused on his completely insane idea for malpractice reform that no one will take seriously. But the ‘attack the medical malpractice lawyers’ part he nails at the end:

As you can imagine, the trial lawyers will fight this solution, because this process will cut them off from a very lucrative business that causes misery and inordinate medical expenses, and does not contribute anything to good medical care.

Does the author of this article believe that he converted a single person on the fence with this editorial?

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Kevin MD reports on the idea of drive-through emergency rooms. Stanford Hospital & Clinics has turned the first floor of a parking garage into a drive-through emergency room.

This sounds completely stupid and insane. And then you think about it a little more and it is not so crazy. The thinking is that this might not only be efficient and convenient but also a good way to treat way to treat a large number of patients during any communicable disease outbreak. The Swine Flu debacle apparently has doctors thinking of more creative ways to treat infectious diseases, and maybe a drive-thru ER would prove effective for some other conditions as well.