Errant Doctors (Not Lawyers) Driving up Medical Malpractice Premiums
A report in Bloomberg effectively illustrates the point that medical malpractice lawyers have supported all along - that controlling malpractice premiums could be done more successfully by cracking down on errant doctors, making it harder for them to practice their brand of medicine.
The report gives the example of a Los Angeles surgeon who has lost two medical malpractice claims, and has had his privileges at the Western Medical Center of Santa Ana suspended, but continues to perform surgeries at another facility. The Medical Board of California has not found it necessary to suspend his license even though it is aware of the two malpractice cases amounting to $528,552 that he lost, as well as the little issue at Western Medical Center.
According to the report, the National Practitioner Data Bank which acts as a bad-doctor-database has only received reports of errant doctors from half of the country's hospitals. When a hospital suspends a doctor's privileges for a minimum of 31 days, it is required to report this to the data bank. However, hospitals seem to be getting around that rule by only imposing a 30-day suspension on a doctor or by labeling such suspensions "a leave of absence." This simply makes a mockery of the rule. Instead, doctors like the Los Angeles neurosurgeon in the Bloomberg story, continue to be able to practice in other hospitals as if nothing had ever happened.
It's this kind of "malpractice" that must be stopped if we are to see any lowering of the malpractice premiums that doctors like to complain about. When such doctors are allowed to practice and patients suffer injuries, they have no choice, but to consult with a medical malpractice attorney.
