Put That In Your North Carolina Tort Reform And Smoke It!

The Raleigh N&O has an article up today about the "new" push for malpractice tort reform in North Carolina (the land of legal-eagle-channeling-dead-babies-turned-USELESS-United-States-Senator-turned-wife-cheating-porn-star-turned-baby-daddy).

Allow me to summarize the article.  The N&O features (very sympathetically) family members of patients who've taken their cases to settlement despite all of the hurdles already imposed by the heavily-stacked-in-favor-of-hospitals legal system.  The new Republican regime in Raleigh is gung-ho-full-steam-ahead-to-pass-something-anything-that-appears-"business-friendly" without really looking at the core of the problem (that would be doctors' & hospitals' ABJECT FAILURE to effectively & fairly police their own)  Trial lawyers are having seizures (that part I'm okay with).

But somehow, neither the high-minded journalists in Raleigh, nor the N.C. Coalition for Patient Safety, nor the N.C. House Select Committee on Tort Reform, nor Republican hot-shot Harold Brubaker think that the ugly story of what happened to former state-&-Federal public servant, Dr. Mary Johnson, for reporting malpractice at her hometown hospital is "relevant" to the subject of "reform".

A doctor who has endured every manner of professional and personal insult for doing her duty by a patient-not-even-her-own remains out in the cold - not worthy of a phone call or an invite to testify to the Super-Special-Select House Committee.

The Committee would get an earful . . . particularly about the quality of justice for whistle-blowing physicians in North Carolina . . . where the truth doesn't count for a whole lot if you're taking on the "right people". 

I dropped a comment on the article:

Here's a response to the oh-so-noble lawyers & politicians.

Once upon a time, thirteen years ago in my hometown of Asheboro (land of Harold Brubaker), and while in PUBLIC SERVICE, I reported MALPRACTICE on the part of a colleague - a "colleague" who FALSELY ADVERTISED his abilities - and whose mistakes nearly cost a critically-ill newborn infant her life.


Two weeks after I intervened in the case (by ALL accounts saving the child's life) and REPORTED the incident, I was out of a job - and thrust into a medico-legal nightmare that has yet to end - a nightmare that I CAN ASSURE YOU rivals what the patients featured in this article have been through (I can also assure you that the noble lawyers in this state - shielded by the N.C. State Bar will lie and lie and lie some more to get what they want and hide the mistakes of North Carolina's hospitals).


The Medical Board is a toothless joke when it comes to overseeing the bad behavior of the executives who drive some of the doctors' decisions.


Most of my problems have been because the government couldn't oversee its way out of a wet paper bag - and laws have gone un-enforced. My pleas for help over the years - now to prosecute a cut-&-dry case of PERJURY - have fallen on deaf ears.


REFORM THAT IN YOUR TORT REFORM. 

A couple of parting thoughts:

For the record, as a physician who was unsuccessfully-sued for malpractice, let me just say that the "blanket immunity" being proposed for ED doctors is WRONG . . . just as blanket-immunity-that-does-not-factor-in-bad-faith is already wrong for hospital peer review committees. 

And, as a hospital-based Pediatrician often called in to rescue situations (of people/patients I've never met) on the OB unit and/or the ED, HOW is it FAIR to the rest of us for the state to offer legal immunity ONLY to ED doctors?