Readers of this blog know that the most common form of medical malpractice is misdiagnosis. There are a number of reasons doctors misdiagnose patients. Among them are impatience on the part of the doctor, a rare illness or a common illness with an unusual presentation, the presence of confirmation bias, and some others. One of the others is a poor history from the patient.

A good patient history is an essential part of the diagnostic process: What are your symptoms? When did they begin? Are they constant or do they come and go? Tell me about family illnesses. With what…
Continue Reading “To Tell The Truth”

Pray you never need a pricey drug to keep you alive. Of course, if you are a senior, the odds are that you are going to need one of these sooner or later. If that happens you may be in need of an Artificial Intelligence program to help you figure out how to avoid being fleeced. “But I am on Medicare,” you say. “How can this happen to me?” Read on and find out.

Medicare does not automatically cover the cost of your medications. You need a separate, optional plan for that, which is called Medicare Part D. Lots of…
Continue Reading Another Example Of Our Flawed Health Care Delivery System

500 years ago, kings ruled realms across the world. Many of them claimed to have been anointed by God. From this came the rule of law that the king could do no wrong. No matter what the king may do, a subject had no right of legal recourse. This legal doctrine of sovereign immunity became the law in England, was passed down to our colonial ancestors, and became the law in the various states after we gained our freedom from England.

Eventually, the people demanded that the state be accountable for its conduct and state legislatures began to dismantle the…
Continue Reading A Trap For The Unwary

We live in an unequal society and one of the places this shows up is in life expectancy. Turns out that life expectancy is a good marker for a lot of other things relating to our health. If we are unhealthy and not able to afford a good diet or don’t have access to health care, our life expectancy is going to suffer.

Twenty years ago, a study was undertaken of the factors which affect life expectancy in the United States. Looking for new insights, the researchers divided Americans into eight groups that they called the Eight Americas. Recently, they …
Continue Reading The Ten Americas

Given my practice, I see a lot of medical malpractice and medical mistakes. It is sometimes easy to forget about all the doctors, nurses and other providers out there who are doing excellent work and who care greatly about the patients they encounter. This post is to recognize and thank them.

The majority of people who enter the medical field do so in order to help others. They commit to long hours away from their families, exposure to illness, working nights and weekends, and for many doing so at relatively low pay.

When the stuff hits the fan, they are…
Continue Reading Thank You, Health Care Providers

Those long airplane flights to Europe, Asia, or Australia are not only a pain in the derriere, they can be hazardous to your health. The culprit is your circulation system. Prolonged inactivity slows the flow of blood in the legs and increases the likelihood clots will form. These clots can break off and travel to the lungs where they are termed pulmonary emboli. Depending on their number and size, pulmonary emboli can cause symptoms that range from mild shortness of breath to death.

We need our blood to clot. If our blood did not clot, even the slightest wound might…
Continue Reading Those Long Airplane Flights

As any regular reader of this blog knows, large medical malpractice verdicts are made to be reversed or reduced. The big verdicts get lots of attention in the press and lead many doctors and their insurance companies to claim the sky is falling. Then, after the press has left and the attention of the public is focused elsewhere, the large verdict is either reduced by the trial judge or overturned on appeal. This was exactly what recently happened to the largest malpractice verdict ever in Iowa. The state supreme court reversed it and sent it back for a new trial.
Continue Reading Told You So

There is an interesting medical malpractice case winding its way through the courts of Florida. It describes an egregious case of malpractice and a coverup by the doctor and hospital after the fact. While it is egregious, it is not an isolated case. The medical industry (doctors, hospitals, and their insurance companies) regularly go to great lengths to keep the public in the dark about which doctors and hospitals give bad care. Secrecy and coverup are never good for the public and, in some cases, can have fatal consequences.

Today’s story teaches many lessons.

The patient was a 70 year…
Continue Reading Secrecy And Coverup: What They Don’t Want You To Know Can Kill You

A few weeks ago, I attended a birthday celebration for my older son. Almost the entire family was there. He prepared a Mexican fiesta meal, complete with margaritas from scratch. Almost exactly 30 hours later, I was vomiting my insides out. So was my wife, one of my daughters and her husband, and the birthday boy himself. Everyone who had a margarita got sick. When we put it all together later, we concluded one or more of the limes he squeezed had been contaminated by someone with norovirus.

Norovirus, often referred to as “the 24 hour flu,” is a form…
Continue Reading Norovirus Is Here – Protect Yourself

BCG, a vaccine also known as Bacillus Calmette-Geurin, has been around for over 100 years. It was developed from a strain of bovine tuberculosis that was cultured repeatedly for over 100 generations until it was unable to cause disease but was still able to confer immunity. It is used widely and safely almost everywhere else in the world to vaccinate newborns against tuberculosis. In the United States, we have a smaller incidence of tuberculosis. Rather than vaccinate all, we test all infants for tuberculosis exposure and treat only those who test positive. In spite of its lack of publicity, BCG…
Continue Reading BCG: An Old Vaccine With New Promise

Everywhere you look in the health care delivery system, you find players have created obstacles to keep you from finding out what is going on. It is not an accident. Big players know there is truth in the old saying, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The less sunlight that shines on their business practices, the better for them. The less sunlight, the more money they make.

Health care providers, especially the big ones, despise government involvement in health care. They particularly dislike price controls. “Let the free market operate,” they say. And then they do everything they can to frustrate…
Continue Reading Secrecy: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

A friend of mine is probably going to need surgery. He asked me to look into the surgeon who was recommending the surgery to him. Here is what I did for my friend. You should do the same thing whenever surgery is recommended to you.

If it is significant surgery, get a second opinion. Remember that surgeons earn income when they operate on you. Different surgeons may have different opinions about the need for surgery or what the best surgical approach might be. Don’t just rely on the first opinion you receive.

After recommending he get a second opinion, I…
Continue Reading When You Need Surgery

Wouldn’t it be nice to invest in a business proposition in which you make money no matter how well or poorly the business does? Sweet deals like that are hard to come by unless you are private equity investing in hospitals. Steward Health Care is a prime example of what can happen and how many lives can be lost and patients and workers hurt when private equity employs its financial tricks to assure it makes money no matter what. You can read all about it here.

Steward Health Care is no more. It declared bankruptcy in May of 2024…
Continue Reading Heads, I Win. Tails, You Lose.