Comment Re:Tort reform urgently needed! (Score 1) 135
Ok 20 cases out of 1,000,000
Thats .00002 % incidence of "wrong site/wrong pt" not exactly an epidemic , nor do we know that any of those cases involved the same doctor or even the same hospital.
While i agree that at face value " wrong site/ wrong pt " should be malpractice let's not jump to conclusions.
While "wrong pt" is harder ( but not impossible) to justify , i can think of quite a few reasons why one might operate on the wrong site.
After all the problem with assessing malpractice is that it always involves the use of 100% diagnosticly accurate HINDSIGHT.
The benifit of 100% diagnostic accuracy is something that doctors almost never have.
Completely removing doctors from responsibilty is something many propose..."lets model england or canada" they say ... doctors in countries with socialized medcine have vast immunity.
" we need a nationwide HMO" ...until people realize that suing a HMO or it's doctors is almost impossible.
As someone who has attended and testified in many medical malpractice trials i can say that the current method for dealing with medical mistakes and malpractice is dreadfully broken.
This issue i was trying to make with the earlier post was one of context . The common person hears "medical mistake" and leaps to "malpractice". That very leap is the first thing we need to change.
I would like to think that the slashdot crowd is above such base assumptions. While this may be a silly position, my last shred of optimism tells me that the best place for rational change to begin is the smarter then average crowd here.
Thats
While i agree that at face value " wrong site/ wrong pt " should be malpractice let's not jump to conclusions.
While "wrong pt" is harder ( but not impossible) to justify , i can think of quite a few reasons why one might operate on the wrong site.
After all the problem with assessing malpractice is that it always involves the use of 100% diagnosticly accurate HINDSIGHT.
The benifit of 100% diagnostic accuracy is something that doctors almost never have.
Completely removing doctors from responsibilty is something many propose..."lets model england or canada" they say
" we need a nationwide HMO"
As someone who has attended and testified in many medical malpractice trials i can say that the current method for dealing with medical mistakes and malpractice is dreadfully broken.
This issue i was trying to make with the earlier post was one of context . The common person hears "medical mistake" and leaps to "malpractice". That very leap is the first thing we need to change.
I would like to think that the slashdot crowd is above such base assumptions. While this may be a silly position, my last shred of optimism tells me that the best place for rational change to begin is the smarter then average crowd here.
