In February of this year, about the time I sent this letter to the Medical Board/NC Legislature (a letter that did not go on a law firm's stationary), Dr. John Faulkner, a Raleigh physician, filed a lawsuit against the NC Medical Board. The crux of the lawsuit was that the NC Medical Society had too much influence over the actions of the Board by virtue of who sits on the Board and how these people are chosen.
I've blogged before on the extra-special way the NC Medical Society takes care of its own. I no longer pay dues to an organization that's only about lip service.
I openly encourage other doctors to "speak with their feet" and their money . . . and walk away from an "advocacy" organization that long ago walked away from the doctors fighting the down & dirty battles on the front lines of medicine.
As an observation, Dr. Faulkner's lawsuit failed to note one big factor in the equation: That the NC Medical Society pretty much kowtows to the NC Hospital Association on anything and everything. The hospitals, you see, have all the money and economic influence.
[*Post publication afterthought: For all that the John Hoods of this world love to blather on about "free markets' and patient "choice" when it comes to medicine, most communities don't have a lot of "choice" when it comes to their hospitals. Most communities have one, or maybe two (and if they've got more than one, the hospitals are almost always "at war"), and God forbid that anyone says ANYTHING bad about the hospital . . . as that might take "business" somewhere else and out of the county.]
Doctors are but spattered gnats on the windshield.
Anyway, Dr. Faulkner was joined in the lawsuit by three patients who felt that the Board had failed them in its obligation to protect them from "troubled doctors" . . . doctors the Board was slow to discipline.
The two paragraphs deleted (for publication on the blog) from my afroementioned letter to the NC legislature addressed one of those situations. Still waiting for something to get done on that one.
The legal issues are so complex and all. Even if the medical issues are not.
To this day, I still marvel at how easy it was for baby-loving Randolph Hospital to yank my hospital privileges immediately after I sued their "controlled affiliate" (without me being properly notified or present to challenge the action) . . . that lawsuit being filed after I was fired from that same "controlled affiliate" for defying executives to intervene in a NEONATAL case being horrifically mismanaged by another doctor . . . while "troubled doctors" can stall forever and wrangle and pretty much terrorize everyone around them who has to cope with their shenanigans.
Dr. Faulkner's lawsuit was dropped this week, because the state "responded" to the lawsuit by changing the law. The plaintiffs say they're happy with that.
. . . the General Assembly responded this summer by enacting a law that changes the way some members get on the state regulatory board, putting a wider buffer between the doctors' association and the state board.
Under the new system, a nine-member review panel will recommend seven doctors and a physicians assistant or nurse practitioner to the board.
The review panel will have four Medical Society members.
"Everyone in the state will benefit from this change," Miracle (one of the patient-plaintiffs) said in the release (announcing the lawsuit had been dropped).
On the flip side of that citizen action, my letter to the Medical Board (sent six months ago - again not under a law firm's cover) has been totally and utterly ignored. Not a single response has been offered by any state official who got the letter. . .
Not from ANY member or representative of the NC Medical Board . . .
Not from the Governor of NC (Mike Easley) . . .
Not from the NC Lieutenant Governor (Beverly Perdue) . . .
Not from the NC Attorney General (Roy Cooper) . . .
Not from the President of the NC Senate (Marc Basnight) . . .
Not from the NC Speaker of the House (the new one, Joe Hackney as opposed to the one who went to jail for influence peddling) . .
Not from ANY representative of ANY NC House or Senate subcommittee . . .
Not from ANY representative of the NC Medical Society . . .
Not from ANY representative of the NC Pediatric Society . . .
In fact, in the case of Dr. Mary Johnson, the NC Medical Board would rather quietly re-write the law that might finally give her some measure of justice.
And since what happened to me is "not relevant" at all to anything going on these days in health-care, I could not get Mark Binker (the N&R's man on the "Capital Beat") to answer a simple question about how that little bit of under-the-table re-writing was going before he went on vacation.
Of course, I'm quite used to waiting and doing these things myself.
It just demonstrates (once again) the LIE that is the N&R's version of "citizen journalism". Can't you just feel the love for the people JR & company have dismissed as "trolls" in our little local blogosphere?
Yeah sure, I wanna re-arrange my schedule and come to Converge South for some MORE of that extra-special-lovin'.
I digress. You know what this lawsuit confirms for me? The N&O report says it all: The General Assembly RESPONDED to Dr. Faulkner's lawsuit.
It tells me that I need to put all of the noble notions of going through appropriate channels . . . of officials doing the right thing because it's the right thing . . . of holding only the perpetrators responsible (the game I've been playing and losing for going on five years) . . . and find me a big, bad, doctor-hating, hospital chewing-up-and spitting-out law firm . . . AND SUE THE CRAP OUT OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA . . . for failing to enforce the law and/or protect the duties it requires.
What's more, I need to do it in an ELECTION YEAR . . . so we can really get this dirty linen (all dirtied on the Democrats' watch . . . any questions? . . . just look at the list of people who did not answer my correspondence/calls for help) finally cleaned and aired.
It's time to pull back that dirty curtain . . . as Kevin says.
Filing a lawsuit is apparently the ONLY WAY to get the state to move.
North Carolina does not protect patients. North Carolina does not protect doctors advocating for patients.
North Carolina simply does not care at all.
And "ethics" needs to stay in quotes, because ethics is a joke.
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2 comments:
that lawsuit being filed after I was fired from that same "controlled affiliate" for defying executives to intervene in a NEONATAL case being horrifically mismanaged by another doctor . .
I had been under the assumption that the executives did not intervene in this situation until after you helped the child. This statement leaves a different impression.
Dale, due respect, I've covered this before. But for you, I will do it again:
RMA's Director (who "left" the practice about six months after I did . . . and last I heard has a cushy job directing a big/prominent cardiology practice in Greensboro), delivered a "warning" memo to me only days before the nursery incident.
As background, I had been cleaning up other peoples' messes right and left . . . and putting up with a lot of unacceptable behavior (I will assume that you remember the story of our former Chief of Obstetrics carrying on an extrmarital affair with a nurse . . . getting her pregnant . . . then aborting his own baby in their shared apartment). And I was getting more than a little tired of getting dumped on. "Proper channels" were clearly not working, and (as Chair of the hospital's Peri-natal Committee) I was getting more vocal about the problems.
The memo essentially told me that if I opened my mouth . . . even once . . . about matters pertaining to the actions/behavior of other doctors without clearing it through him first, I would be fired for cause.
Short and sweet: "Shut up or else."
Steven Eblin backed him up in the threat. In fact he was angry when I "summoned" him to my office to explain the warning after Bridges delivered it. You see, Mr. Eblin was too important to sully his hands with such things. And I was a peon.
The problem with the threat (and this was the opinion of several other physicians I ran the memo by), was that it was a clear attempt by administration to interfere with medical-decision-making . . . and with peer review.
Just a few nights later . . . when a terrified LDRP nurse called me in the middle of the night, and begged me to come in . . . because she was worried that another doctor was in way over his head/had no idea what he was doing (and a baby was dying) . . . it put me in a bit of a bind.
The director was at home in bed (in Greensboro . . . you see, he never moved to Asheboro). And I had minutes to make a decision.
I went to help that child KNOWING that it would put my job in jeopardy.
But I put fear on my nightstand and went in. I did my job. And I reported the other doctor to peer review (with out clearing it through executives). Two weeks later, I was out of a job.
Pure and simple retaliation.
Does the Medical Board give a damn?
No.
The doctor I rescued that night . . . who works for a Cone affiliate . . . barely got slapped on the hand (either by Randolph Hospital peer review or the Medical Board) . . . and eventually became Chief of Staff.
Meanwhile, I was trapped in a living hell.
So every time I see an add that boasts how much Randolph Hospital "loves" babies, I want to puke.
And every time the NC Medical Board puts out another press release bragging about how well it's doing policing doctors, I have to reach for the Pepto.
And PLEASE don't get me started on all those grandstanding prosecutors telling us ordinary folk that perjury will not be tolerated in this state.
That is just a damned lie (forgive my "French").
Incidentally, this Director (his name is Mike Bridges) also lied under Oath . . . in exactly the same fashion Morrison and Eblin did.
I simply have not been able to find the original signature page for the documents that were filed with the court.
Hope that clears it all up for you.
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