[kaila]

I am married to a surgeon. If he misses call, the responsibility is on him to find coverage. If no coverage, your hospital may not be happy with no surgical specialist call for the ED.They dont care about your reason, they care about who is going to cover the call, and missing flights does not have the same standing as being hit by a car. Trading out call ahead of time is way different ( and easier) than finding a person to cover you the following day.

[Vermont Lt]

I work in the telecom end. One of the things my staff does is maintain the myriad of on call lists, from the engineers who fix gas lines to surgeons, to PACU and OR clean up crews. The surgeons—general to ortho and Nuero generally have a primary and a back up.

My folks are the ones who coordinate emergency surgeries. We are not a trauma center, so it’s mostly appendicitis and broken hips.

What I see are the docs switching out their calls regularly. The Med Services office would usually be able to juggle the coverage for one guy for a night.

Every hospital is different, and I get that. But my experience has been that given a days notice, coverage isn’t a major deal.

That’s a long answer for a small part of this.

[Clearly Right]

I believe it is very likely that other lawyers in Kentucky are currently actively pursuing some of Dr. Dao's patients who were scheduled to see him that day, and that some of them will probably be suing United Airlines also (on behalf of those patients), due to the serious damage to their health they will claim has ensued because of the absence of the doctor that day. (Dr. Dao's Chicago lawyers are probably trying to contact his patients in Kentucky about those health matters also.)   United should be prepared to pay out a hefty bundle because of their utterly foolish handling of this matter.