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You still have to worry about it, because you could still get sued over it and still lose a professional license. How many physicians and nurses have been prosecuted before this bill for honest errors? When you have humans doing anything, there are going to be errors.
All it takes is one to send chills through the profession. There is a huge difference between being forced to change professions or perhaps losing your house and going to prison.
I am not aware of malpractice cases which result in criminal prosecution. Criminal charges would be for malicious, intentional acts, which would be very, very rare.
I reviewed cases in my specialty for the state board for 25 years. I can say that 95% of malpractice cases are complete BS- a complication may or may not have happened, but if so, is a known complication and the physician did not deviate from the standard of care. I saw little correlation between true malpractice and the filing of a malpractice suit. About 5%, however, was legit. In many of those cases, however, the plaintiffs had crappy experts or attorneys and did not ultimately win their case, even though they should have.
I can say that MOST disciplinary actions came about from docs having sex with patients/staff, illegal drug/alcohol use, or trading scripts for sex.
State boards are NECESSARY, as most private hospitals have essentially ZERO peer review. They will let their friends get away with gross, obvious errors and no action will ever be taken. The only time justice is served is through the legal system or through the state boards. Peer review within institutions is an absolute joke and usually nothing at all is ever done about problem providers.
Why? That makes no sense given the legislation....was it just instinctual to tack them like if you drop your sandwich do you just start blaming Big pharm lol?
If you are comfortable with your doctor having no consequence for misdiagnosis or incompetent treatment, that's okay by me. But I'm not. The next step will be a moratorium on civil lawsuits as well.
And as far as "big pharm," they literally just screwed the entire world with ineffective, potentially dangerous, experimental medication a couple years ago. With no consequence. So when I say that doctors are now going to get a blank check as far as treatment and have no consequence for screwups, neither can be too broken up about that.
If you are comfortable with your doctor having no consequence for misdiagnosis or incompetent treatment, that's okay by me. But I'm not. The next step will be a moratorium on civil lawsuits as well.
And as far as "big pharm," they literally just screwed the entire world with ineffective, potentially dangerous, experimental medication a couple years ago. With no consequence. So when I say that doctors are now going to get a blank check as far as treatment and have no consequence for screwups, neither can be too broken up about that.
You misstate the impact of the law.
Doctors and other medical professionals will continue to face the consequences of a misdiagnosis or incompetent treatment.
There are still civil remedies for these actions.
Licenses can be revoked, effectively ending the doctor's professional career.
You still have to worry about it, because you could still get sued over it and still lose a professional license. How many physicians and nurses have been prosecuted before this bill for honest errors? When you have humans doing anything, there are going to be errors.
One person making an error is understandable.
What is not understandable is when you have multiple health care workers involved in a procedure. One may make a mistake, but everyone else there should double and triple check everything.
Example: I read a story years ago about someone (believe it was in GA) had gone in to get a leg amputated. Apparently, whoever it was that was to mark the leg, marked the wrong damn leg. The surgeons went ahead and amputated that wrong leg. So now, the patient, who should have been left with one leg, lost BOTH of their legs.
At what point do people take responsibility for being careless before cutting off body parts? SURELY there was some type of information in that patient's records. Upon seeing the mark on the leg, indicating that was the leg to amputate, the people on that team should have VERIFIED that it was the correct leg. Clearly no one did that.
So yes, the person who marked the wrong leg made a mistake. Maybe they were exhausted from who knows how many hours of working.
But EVERYBODY ELSE on that team had the ability to double check, triple check, to ENSURE that the correct leg was marked before going ahead with the amputation.
It's not always one person involved, and they should all be held accountable.
I just had cataracts surgery. At each phase they asked me my birthdate, what procedure I was in for, and which eye was being treated.
The redundancy and thoroughness was just wonderful and welcome.
This reduces the odds of a mistake to nearly zero. Just a wonderfully thorough redunancy to avoid errors.
My hat is off to whomever installed this brillant, simple, and effective QA process.
Yes, that's an important precaution. I know some people get annoyed (or amused) by being asked the same questions like this over and over again.
But in a busy practice, where there are many different medical people running around trying to get to so many patients, I can see how they could get people mixed up if they weren't careful.
In response to the OP's question:
Honest, good faith mistake: That seems like a civil issue, where a doctor or health professional would need to use their malpractice insurance to pay out a claim if they screwed up or be sued if they were negligent and someone suffered some bad effects that were beyond normal risks of success or non-success of a procedure.
Intentional Act: There was a case in my area a couple of years ago where a vile nurse (certainly an exception and not a rule) was intentionally giving people the wrong medications. That person should definitely be treated as a criminal.
If you are comfortable with your doctor having no consequence for misdiagnosis or incompetent treatment, that's okay by me. But I'm not. The next step will be a moratorium on civil lawsuits as well.
And as far as "big pharm," they literally just screwed the entire world with ineffective, potentially dangerous, experimental medication a couple years ago. With no consequence. So when I say that doctors are now going to get a blank check as far as treatment and have no consequence for screwups, neither can be too broken up about that.
After spouting piles of incorrect information about what this law actually does and are still whining about big pharm which has nothing to do with the topic....don't you have some thread about 5G somewhere to blame on Big med or Big Pharm or Big Foot?
What is not understandable is when you have multiple health care workers involved in a procedure. One may make a mistake, but everyone else there should double and triple check everything.
Example: I read a story years ago about someone (believe it was in GA) had gone in to get a leg amputated. Apparently, whoever it was that was to mark the leg, marked the wrong damn leg. The surgeons went ahead and amputated that wrong leg. So now, the patient, who should have been left with one leg, lost BOTH of their legs.
At what point do people take responsibility for being careless before cutting off body parts? SURELY there was some type of information in that patient's records. Upon seeing the mark on the leg, indicating that was the leg to amputate, the people on that team should have VERIFIED that it was the correct leg. Clearly no one did that.
So yes, the person who marked the wrong leg made a mistake. Maybe they were exhausted from who knows how many hours of working.
But EVERYBODY ELSE on that team had the ability to double check, triple check, to ENSURE that the correct leg was marked before going ahead with the amputation.
It's not always one person involved, and they should all be held accountable.
It is the surgeon who is primarily responsible.
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