Today is February 23. If you were wondering if any Maryland physicians were disciplined or sanctioned during the month of January, keep wondering. Because the Maryland Board of Physicians has not posted that information to its website even though we are four weeks into the next month.
I don't know about you, but I would like to know if my doctor was subjected to discipline in January.
I wonder if the lawyer representing Terrell Suggs’ girlfriend has much experience in plaintiffs’ tort litigation. Here’s why. First- filing a 70 million dollar lawsuit before the final protective order hearing is a bad idea simply because it offers a great financial motive cross-examination to the other side. Second- it hurts your settlement leverage, because for famous people silence is worth something. Third- running to the courthouse to file a suit for money damages isn’t going to look good to your mostly conservative, Ravens fan Baltimore County jury when the battery case goes to trial. Maybe the amount of the ad damnum won’t come into evidence, but the timeline sure will. Fourth- for a case arising after 10/01/09, your non-economic damages are capped at $725,000. So I guess you have $19,250,000 in economic damages, right? That must have been a really, really bad broken nose. I guess filing for such a large amount, so quickly, did accomplish one of the goals- it got the lawyer’s name in the paper, and he smartly declined comment. I really think the primary goals- getting a determination on custody and the protective order- could best be accomplished without all of the sensationalism and media attention caused by the 70 million dollar lawsuit. After all, there are three more years to file the tort claim.
If this woman had come to me for legal representation, the first thing I would have done would be to find the most expert family lawyer I could to handle the custody and protective order case. I have handled protective order hearings before, but there are people who do that for a living, more expertly than I could. I wonder if the family lawyer representing her will associate with experienced co-counsel for the tort case? I’m curious to see how this turns out, but based on what I have seen so far, I hope Ms. Williams has some pretty compelling evidence or she could have a tough fight on her hands. Too bad there's no grounds to transfer venue to Pittsburgh.
WhiteCoat advocates a loser-pays system in medical malpractice cases. Sure. I’ll go along with that, if it comes with automatic liability for the physician if the patient is not cured. After all, it’s fair for he who does not succeed to pay, right? Why don’t we all agree that doctors know more about medicine than lawyers, and lawyers know more about the law than doctors?
Paul Luvera has some tips for cross-examining Defense Medical Exam doctors. Paul calls this a basic outline, which it is. Miller & Zois lawyers use a much more detailed approach, but Paul provides an outstanding basic foundation for the cross.
I had never heard of Moe Levine until I got an ad for a book about him from the American Association for Justice. Then I found a closing he gave in a case about a young woman who broke her arm in a car accident. This is an outstanding effort in a case all of us have tried at least once. He truly does a wonderful job of personalizing his client’s non-economic damages in a case where there is a real, but not catastrophic, injury. Thanks to Howard Nations for providing this wonderful resource.
Today is October 14. Each month the Maryland Board of Physicians posts on its website a report of sanction proceedings against the physicians and other medical professionals it regulates. The sanctions for September, 2009 were just posted today.
This is a big deal. That list of sanction proceedings is pretty much the only way for Marylanders to know if there has been a proceeding against their doctor’s license. Here is a great example to show why this is important, and why the Board of Physicians gives mere lip service to the safety of Maryland patients.
I have a client who was injured in an accident on January 1, 2007. She did what most people would do. She had a visit at the ER, and then followed up for treatment with her regular doctor. She was treated by her primary care doctor from January 20, 2007 to December 12, 2007. The doctor prescribed medications, physical therapy and chiropractic treatment. That all sounds great, right? Perfectly appropriate.
Until I tell you that this doctor had her license suspended effective September 30, 2006 for failing to resolve a state tax lien. On January 22, 2008, the Board finally realized that the doctor had been practicing without a license since October 1, 2006. They only found out because someone made a complaint. In February, 2009, the Board finally got around to sanctioning the doctor, with a $25,000 fine and imposing conditions for reinstatement.
So, all of the treatment my client got was done by a doctor with no license.
I wrote some time ago about some doctors conditioning treatment on patients promising not to post online reviews of the doctor. This is directed at websites like Angie's List, RateMD's.com, and the like. They way this works is that the physician will not see the patient unless the patient executes an agreement not to post reviews of this type. Today the Washington Post writes about these kinds of requirements becoming more prevalent in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
These kinds of sites exist for lawyers too. I understand that most professionals don't want to be at the mercy of a layperson who may not understand the realities we work under. Plus, most of these services have no filter, so there may be content posted that is inflammatory, defamatory, or outright false. The crackpot with an axe to grind has the same ability to post that a legitimate consumer does.
The problem here is that all professionals, including doctors and lawyers, are in a customer service industry. It's true that a layperson may not really have the knowledge to asses the quality of medical or legal services. On the other hand, it is easy for the average person to judge whether the staff is friendly or rude, wait times are unreasonable, if phone calls are returned promptly, or if facilities are clean and well-kept.
I would think professionals who excel at these kinds of service issues would have as much to gain from positive reviews as others have to lose from negative reviews. I think it is ridiculous to conditon medical treatment on the execution of a silence agreement. The best way to address the concerns these physicians have is to provide good customer service. One bad review may be a crackpot. Fifty bad reviews is likely a sign of a problem.
I think it is normal for professionals in any field to become accustomed to the processes and procedures we deal with every day. I think that phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the legal field. Most people have extremely limited experience with the workings of the court system in general, and with civil litigation in particular. The average citizen’s legal experience is most likely limited to serving jury duty, or appearing as a defendant in traffic court.
For example, I have often had clients seem surprised that I am usually quite friendly with the attorney representing the defendant in their personal injury case. To me, most of these lawyers are colleagues, law school classmates, or simply fellow professionals that I have gotten to know across the aisle at trials. They seem to believe that adversarial equates to hostile. This issue often arises in clients’ frustration with the pace (extremely slow) of litigation. People also seem to believe that the insurance company or defense attorney has a particular axe to grind against them, where I see that as business as usual.
This is an overly long intro to a blog that I have found to be great reading. There is an emergency department doctor who was sued for medical malpractice and is blogging about the course of his own trial (after the fact).
Continue reading "What Is It Like To get Sued?" »
Today the Maryland Daily Record reports that the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen has rated Maryland's physician discipline system as one of the worst in the country.
Public Citizen's spokesman (who is also an M.D.) states that this "is troubling because it indicates many states are not living up to their obligations to protect patients from bad doctors." Maryland is ranked 45th and has been one of the ten worst states for the past six rankings.
In rebuttal, Irving Pinder (Executive Director of the Maryland Board of Physicians) called Public Citizen's findings flawed.
"I've always argued that Public Citizen's statistics are very misleading because ... they assume the pool of doctors is the same in every state," Pinder said. "Maryland has some of the best doctors ... in the country. If you need to go in for major surgery, would you want to be in Alaska or Maryland?"
Gee, Irv, I don't know. Is taking out a kidney major surgery? Let me find out if Alaska lets doctors remove the wrong kidney, lie about it, and then keep practicing medicine. I'll get back to you.
In Maryland, the conduct of licensed physicians is governed by the Maryland Board of Physicians. This entity essentially determines who is licensed to practice medicine in Maryland, and is responsible for disciplining doctors when they don’t follow the rules.
The conduct of licensed attorneys is governed by the Court of Appeals of Maryland. The Court sets the standards for admission to the Maryland bar, and handles disciplinary issues regarding attorney misconduct. The Attorney Grievance Commission acts as “prosecutor” of attorneys accused of misconduct.
I would like to contrast two cases to illustrate how this process works.
First: the case of attorney Jill Johnson Pennington. This lawyer was hired to handle a personal injury case. She failed to competently represent her clients by missing the statute of limitations. This effectively ended any chance the clients had to recover in court. OK. That isn’t good. It only gets worse. Compounding the problem, the lawyer lied to the clients about whether their case had been filed. Then she presented them with false settlement paperwork making it look like the party responsible was settling. In reality, the lawyer was paying her own funds to make the faux “settlement”. She never told the clients what had happened or about the possible malpractice claim they had against her.
It is black-letter law that attorney discipline proceedings are conducted for the protection of the public. The lawyer was disbarred. It’s a no-brainer.
If you lie to clients to cover up your own malpractice, and fail to advise them of their rights as a result of your misconduct, you deserve to be disbarred. Clients need to know that their attorney has a duty to them that will be enforced. The system cannot work if there is no trust that attorneys are acting in clients’ best interest, or if they may fail to do so without any threat of repercussions.
Second: The case of a urologistwho was treating a patient with a cancerous tumor on the left kidney. The doctor mistakenly removed the (healthy, except for a benign growth) right kidney instead. Then, he never told the patient he took out the wrong kidney, even when the patient and other doctors called him about the mistake. He never informed the hospital of his mistake or documented it in the operative note.
The Maryland Board of Physicians found the doctor violated the standard of adequate care, engaged in unprofessional conduct, made a false report in the practice of medicine, and made a willful misrepresentation in treatment. Now, for the sanction imposed- a public REPRIMAND. Dr. Levin also had to write a letter of apology, undergo counseling, monitoring, and continuing education.
Lawyer commits malpractice and lies to cover it up. Sanction- Disbarment.
Doctor commits malpractice and lies to cover it up. Sanction- told not to do it again and must say he is sorry.
Continue reading "Does Maryland Physician Discipline Protect the Public?" »
The internet has proven to be a valuable tool for consumers. With a few keystrokes, it is easy to obtain multiple reviews of a product or service. This is true for electronics, appliances, restaurants, hotels, even lawyers.
This "consumer review" phenomenon has caught up to the medical industry. Many doctors have become concerned about reviews posted online by patients. The Baltimore Sun's Consuming Interests blog reports that some doctors are requiring patients to sign waivers promising not to post these kinds of reviews.
Great customer service, guys. What are you afraid of? Judging by the comments to the Sun's story, consumers of medical services don't like this idea too much.
The Sun also reports that four doctors have been sanctioned by the Maryland Board of Physicians, for sexual misconduct, improper prescription practices, and failing to meet the standard of care.
If you are curious about lawyers who get disciplined, you can find that information here.
I am so tired of trial lawyers being portrayed as the bad guy. I'm not a bad guy. The dedicated attorneys I work with aren't bad guys. Yet trial lawyers are a consistent easy target for anyone with an axe to grind about the civil justice system.
Yesterday Ron Miller blogged about the one sided editorials appearing in the Baltimore Sun on the issue of medical malpractice. Ron pointed out how it appears The Sun went out of its way to target trial lawyers in a February 17, 2009 editorial about legislative efforts to increase the caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.
If that wasn't bad enough, the Sun then printed a letter to the editor from a physician named Mark Haas that actually went after trial lawyers three different times in the same letter.
According to the Maryland Board of Physicians website, Dr. Haas has been licensed in Maryland since 1999, and graduated from medical school in 1982. My review of Maryland court records did not show that Dr. Haas has ever been sued for malpractice in this state. Unless Dr. Haas has been named as a defendant in some other state, it doesn't appear that his views can be chalked up to being an unhappy litigant. So I am unable to assign an easy motive to Dr. Haas going out of his way to attack Maryland medical malpractice lawyers that don't appear to have done anything to him.
I got a good chuckle out of Dr. Haas' shot at "well heeled trial lawyers" last night after I drove my 2005 Honda home to my palatial Odenton condo. The servants had the night off, so I read The Sun online while I ate a sandwich. Last time I checked, Hopkins docs weren't exactly crowding the line at area soup kitchens. I would imagine that most professionals are compensated in a way that reflects their education and efforts, including Johns Hopkins pathologists as well as trial lawyers.
I don't know why Dr. Haas hates trial lawyers so much, but I don't have anything against doctors. However, I will not hesitate to file a lawsuit against any defendant who has negligently caused an injury. In my career I have filed suits against doctors, other lawyers, police officers, and even a sitting judge on the District Court of Maryland. Dr. Haas' bias stumps me, especially since he does not apear to be one of the doctors responsible for the bulk of malpractice claims.
When the first editorial was printed, I went to the Sun's website and checked out the biographies of the editorial board. Peter Jensen, a member of the editorial board says that "[i]t's easy to be against taxes, trial lawyers, or rabid dogs." Now, I understand Peter was trying to say he likes to challenge conventional beliefs and was using taxes, trial lawyers and rabid dogs as examples. But what does it say about the editorial board that at least one member thinks being opposed to trial lawyers is a conventional societal belief? Is this how we end up with an editorial and a letter to the editor printed in The Sun espousing the perceived societal belief that trial lawyers are something to be opposed?
Today the Sun evened the score a little, printing a letter with a more even-handed view. Robert Oshel pointed out in his letter that the solution to rising malpractice rates is less malpractice, not limiting victim compensation. He correctly points out that a small minority of practicing physicians is responsible for the lion's share of malpractice claims. I would like to see the medical profession devote the energy it uses for attacking trial lawyers to self policing. No matter what your views are about the legal profession, I think anyone would agree that fewer victims is a sure-fire way to reduce malpractice claims and insurance rates.
Until there are no more negligent doctors causing injuries, our Baltimore medical malpractice lawyers will continue trying to help injured victims.
How much do doctors really know about the impact of medical malpractice? I noticed last week there was a letter to the editor in the Baltimore Sun, written by a doctor. The doctor opined that frivolous lawsuits and the cost of practicing defensive medicine were driving good doctors out of the state.
I read with interest the response letter from the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association. Apparently the original letter writer's subjective beliefs weren't borne out by the facts. Doctors aren't fleeing the state, and there is no tide of needless litigation choking the courts.
Simple self interest dictates that very few frivolous medical malpractice suits are filed. These kinds of cases are complex, and generally require several very expensive expert witnesses to prove. No medical malpractice lawyer is going to put up that kind of money for a frivolous case.
