Medical Malpractice

July 6, 2009

Getting Sued

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).

April 21, 2009

Maryland’s Physician Discipline System Ranked 5th Worst in the U.S.

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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.

August 25, 2008

The Effects of Medical Malpractice

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

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 will put up that kind of money for a frivolous case.