Posted on 04/08/2002 12:07:09 PM PDT by jwalburg
Doctors close offices in protest
Associated Press
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EDINBURG, Texas - Hundreds of doctors and other medical professionals closed their offices Monday to protest malpractice lawsuits that they say have led to skyrocketing insurance premiums.
Many of them descended on the Hildago County Courthouse Monday for a "day of awareness."
Dr. Jose Igoa, a 47-year-old psychiatrist who held a picket sign, says he paid $28,000 for medical malpractice insurance last year - three to four times what he paid five years ago. Now, he can't find a renewal policy at all.
Like other doctors here, he says he has been the target of frivolous lawsuits that take time out of his practice and are emotionally stressful.
He says the problem is getting worse.
"We're doctors. We train more than half of our lives to help people. We don't want to cause harm to anybody," he said. "We understand that when we cause some damage we want people to be fairly compensated. But when it comes to legal extortion ... it changes the way we practice medicine."
Up the coast in Nueces County, where 63 percent of doctors had claims filed against them in the last 13 years, doctors planned simultaneous activities to show support.
Emergency services at hospitals will not be stopped.
"They see this as a plea for survival for doctors and patients," said Jon Opelt of Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, which helped organize and publicize the protest.
Critics of the walkout say doctors are being misled by groups backed by big business and seeking limits on jury awards. They say there's no guarantee insurance companies will pass savings from such limits onto policy holders. Meanwhile, they say, tort reforms give patients less recourse against medical errors that kill more people than car accidents, cancer or AIDS.
"Instead of marching on a courthouse, turning their backs on patients, they ought to be marching on the governor's office and joining with constituents to try to do something about skyrocketing insurance rates," said Craig McDonald, director of the lobbying group Texans for Public Justice.
In Texas and nationwide, the insurance industry has been rocked by the stock market slide, the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and lawsuit expenses.
Since 1999, seven of 17 malpractice insurance carriers serving Texas have either left or gone belly up, according to the Texas Department of Insurance.
"Over the last couple of years, we have been paying out more in claims than we have taken in in premiums," said Julie Pulliam of the National Insurance Association. "Claim costs have gone through the roof. The primary reason is the cost of lawsuits. That's why insurers are very supportive of tort reform."
The valley is reaping what it sowed, and could provide a good case study if the GOP was smart enough to use it as an example.
One day these morons were on the highway, and hit the brakes in front of an 18 wheeler. Their car exploded on impact, killing all the passengers.
The cops figured it out, only because one of the officers on the scene of the fireball accident remembered the name of the driver from an accident that occured several months earlier.
One of the biggest secrets/surprises to PIA clymers and even to the MDs in private practice who treat clymers, is that the MDs don't have to see nor treat these clymers in the regular office setting.
I tell all of my MD friends in private practice to run a simple exercise every quarter. A simple exercise that will make them and their staff enjoy their medical practice a lot more after the exercise.
One evening each nurse, receptionist and Doctor takes home a sheet of paper with lined numbers from 1 through 10 listed below that person's name.
They are to list 1 through 10, the worst PIA patients in the practice who cause more problems or could result in legal problems in the future.
Then, the next day during lunch hour, they go through the names. If any patient is listed in the top ten clymer list by all three, the nurse, the receptionist and the doctor, that patient immediately gets a letter telling that patient to find another doctor. Those with two votes out of three that the patient is a PIA Clymer is discussed and may get a letter. He/she and is on the list to be voted on the next quarter. Any patient with only one person claiming that this person is PIA clymer, may have legitimate reasons why they behave like a clymer with that one person. Like one doctor was all ways late to see a CPA who worked by hourly billing. The CPA got along with the RN and receptionist, he resented the Dr getting on the phone with another doctor to shoot the bovine with while he had an appointment. The doctor did this everytime with this CPA. Now the doc sees him on time, and they get along great.
Usually there will be two to three PIA Patient Clymers each quarter in the first year, getting the letter telling them to find another doctor. When these PIA Clymers don't show up to harrass and harangue the office, life becomes better. After about a year, things will mellow out for the practice. It is amazing how getting rid of 6 to 10 real PIA Patient Clymers can make a medical office a bad place to work in. When they are gone, the world is better for that office.
Also, there is apparently a PIA Patient Clymer network, and the word gets out that they had better behave if they are still being seen by that MD and his staff. The remaining clymers will often change their behavior when word gets out that abusive patients are no longer being tolerated in that office.
If a new patient or established patient becomes a world class PIA, the staff doesn't wait a quarter to vote on him/her. They have a discussion at noon or at the end of work re the behavior and send the letter out. One doctor friend had one of these new PIA patients, who came in verbally abused the receptionist, his nurse and started in on the doctor. The doctor told him that he had 30 seconds to get out of his office or the security guard and cops would be called. The clymer left.
Since preventive medicine is often the best medicine, all private practice MDs should immediately stop seeing left wing trial lawyers or even conservative ones who could be trouble.
Tough.
[Maybe the worst of them could spare a little time from their liberal politics, gun-grabbing activities and from running abortoriums and put it into remedial med-school?]
Or move to Canada where there is neither FRee enterprise nor accountability in medicine [Nor "Medicine," come to that] -- and be owned operated and controlled by mindless socialist bureaucrats?
Speaking as a doc who has been in office practice for several years, I don't like kicking patients out of my practice. If they are clearly abusive, then yes, but not just because they are a pain-in-the-butt. Maybe my life would be more pleasant without them, but I do feel a responsibility as their doctor as long as they want to see me. As far as trial lawyers go, I have patients who are trial lawyers and who are fine people; I'm not going to kick them out just because of their profession. Yes, there is a little voice that tells me I have to be very careful with these people, but that's my problem to deal with as their doctor.
I have also had patients who were total jerks their first visit who ultimately turned out to be fine people - maybe they were having a bad day, worried about their health or a family member's health, whatever. Sometimes just trying to be nice will overcome the problem, sometimes not. Your recommendations sound good but should be applied with a liberal (sorry to use the L-word) dose of judgement and understanding.
In Mississippi, scum-suckers and doctors are having it out. Insurance companies for docs are leaving Mississippi.
Mississippi is an ideal place to sue medical companies. See the links below.
Links:
Tort Reform Brings Both Doctors, Lawyers to Capitol
Mississippi Town Becomes Lawsuit Central
What's this guy been smoking?
About 4 years ago, someone was running seminar workshops where these suggestions came from. I used to run MD focus groups/dinners, and I could not believe the change in positive behavior of a young internist. In one year he gone from a grouchy and fed up old/young man to basically a happy doc. I asked him what had happened. He told us about this seminar.
There was a FP, Dr in the focus dinner group with his wife, the office manager/receptionist and office RN. They did a mini workshop during the dinner, and came up with the same 3 names. All 3 abusive patients got a letter the next day. I got an email from that office a few months later about how much better the practice was.
I passed the word to some doctor friends, and they got rid of the top 3 abusers with similiar results. One doctor gave me a case of his award winning Merlot for this suggestion. By getting rid of the abusive patients, he is happier and doesn't have to decide winery or medicine. He does both.
A now retired FP and his partner used to meet with their staff once a quarter and identify the patient who abused the staff and wasted more time. That patient got the letter. This office was doing this back in 1977 and had been for years before I met them. They had basically zero office staff turn over in the practice and both docs worked until they were 70.
My brother in law is an optometrist, and he bought his Dad's practice. His Dad said, "I will only tell you one thing re how to run your practice. That is on a regular basis weed out the abusive/bad patients/customers."
My brother in law did not do that for 4 years and came close to giving up his practice. Finally his Dad said, "Son, listen to me on this one!" He did and still loves his practice 30 years later.
Have a great day! We need good Doctors like you! Just don't suffer needlessly from abusive PIA Clymers.
Medical licenses are issued by state boards of medical examiners. I assure you, they DO take away doctor's licenses. The AMA has no jurisdiction in such matters. Most doctors are not AMA members anyway.
-ccm
Trying to sow a little anti-conservative feeling among Latino freepers and lurkers are we?
Simply stated, a sum of money today is worth more than the same sum of money at any future point. Several factors are involved, the two key ones are inflation and lost opportunity cost. Most of us can understand inflation because we have seen it at work in our daily transactions. Lost opportunity cost has to do with not having the sum of money at the earlier time for savings or investment, i.e. put the money to work.
Hope I haven't been too pedantic here or, if I have, TIA for your forgiveness.
Medical costs, and lawsuits, are low. We should adopt the same thing here.
Disagree? What do you have against England? Are you a "Britophobe?"
What have you been smoking? Do you not realize just how long physicians have to train?
It is not at all unusual for a doctor to be 35 or even 40 before he begins his career, especially if he has also gotten a master's degree or PhD.
While his high school and college buddies have been out there earning money and building their careers, the doctor has usually not earned a dime, but rather has run up at least a hundred thousand in student loans to repay, and often a lot more. Then he has to outfit an office and hire a staff, or buy into an existing practice. Then he gets the privilege of working 60-90 hours a week, at all hours of day or night, caring for litigious and ungrateful patients, at least 30% of whom will never pay a dime of what they owe. Then, every time he sees a patient, he runs the risk of being sued and losing his home and everything he owns.
All this for a salary that is often no more than a master tradesman or government bureaucrat earns. Even the highest-paid physicians do not earn the kind of money that bloodsucking trial lawyers and rapacious corporate executives lose under their sofa cushions.
Now Medicare has unilaterally decreed that all physicians will take a 5% fee cut this year, 5% more next year, and 5% the year after that. This will reduce physician income far more than 15% because they only get to keep what is left after paying the bills. If they are operating on a 30% margin, this means a 50% cut in pay. With malpractice insurance premiums quadrupling or quintupling this year and next, many doctors will soon be paying more in malpractice insurance than they take home.
Many older doctors, and even younger ones in their 40s and 50s-- people who should be in the prime of their careers-- are throwing in the towel. Often they will have worked for many fewer years than they spent in school learning to be doctors. This trend will only accelerate. We are talking about talented, bright, hard working people who have a lot of options. They see that there are alternatives to working like dogs for twenty years, only to see everything they own evaporate in a puff of smoke and reappear as a filthy trial lawyer's Lear Jet.
Mark my words, we are facing a crisis in medical care. Five years from now people are going to be asking "Where have all the doctors gone?" in the same tone one might ask "Who is John Galt?"
-ccm
Get real; you can't count the first 16 of those years, or the first 20 if you count grad school, or every white collar worker who bitches like doctors do would have the same gripe and should be treated in this discussion.
It is not at all unusual for a doctor to be 35 or even 40 before he begins his career, especially if he has also gotten a master's degree or PhD.
A lot of careers are that way. Anyone who rededicates himself to a new career at an older age faces that. And the doctors who emerge at 40 are the ones who did something else first, then "found themselves" after they realized that mapmaking doesn't pay nearly as well as soaking the populace as a doctor.
All this for a salary that is often no more than a master tradesman or government bureaucrat earns.
Uh, exactly how often is this? I think this is a big stretch. The median and average salaries of these folks is around $200,000/yr, and has risen double the rate of inflation almost every year since the "Great Society" days.
Now Medicare has unilaterally decreed that all physicians will take a 5% fee cut this year, 5% more next year, and 5% the year after that....
Big deal. Docs in this country are reaping what they've sown. They've abused their medical monopoly far too long and now the piper is coming to collect.
Mark my words, we are facing a crisis in medical care.
I agree. The doctors have really screwed themselves, and are continuing to screw the country with their "me first, I deserve it!" attitude.
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