When you think of people who scam the public, you don’t normally think of hospitals.  Sure you may think they charge too much or don’t live up to the promises they make to provide health care benefits to the community, but you don’t think of them as scammers.  Maybe you should start.

Two recent stories about hospitals doing sneaky things in the pursuit of more money caught my eye.  As anyone who has been reading this blog knows, our nation’s health care system is a disgrace.  We pay more per person than any other nation on earth and get care…
Continue Reading Hospitals As Scam Artists

Doctors love to feel sorry for themselves when it comes to being held accountable to their patients.  The system is so unfair and forces them to do things they don’t want to do.  The story below is just the latest example.
I was recently reading a summary of medical news primarily intended for doctors when I came across an interview with a former surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Jerome Adams.  The subject of the interview was the high cost of an emergency room visit he recently had in Scottsdale.  Dr. Adams had been in Scottsdale for a conference…
Continue Reading Comforting Lies Doctors Tell Each Other

“Boarding” is the practice of leaving patients on gurneys in the emergency department while waiting for a bed to open up for them in the hospital.  It is occurring frequently and its frequency is only getting worse.  According to the statistics, those most likely to be affected are seniors.

It happens all the time.  A patient is brought to the emergency department.  After an examination and perhaps some tests, the emergency medicine physician concludes the patient needs to be admitted to the hospital for more care.  Often, although the patient is ready to be transferred to the floor, the hospital…
Continue Reading Boarding – The Hospital Practice You Didn’t Even Know You Should Be Worried About

I have had a number of medical malpractice cases in which catastrophic injuries occurred after surgery because of lack of communication between the surgeon and the nurses.  The immediate post-operative period is a critical period as the patient’s body attempts to return to normal from the trauma of the surgery and the effects of general anesthesia.  Much can go wrong and that is why the patient is closely monitored during this period.  However, even the closest and best possible monitoring is worthless, if the doctors in charge of the care are not notified of significant changes in the patient’s condition…
Continue Reading The Importance of Good Communication

If you are enrolled in a health care plan or in a Medicare Advantage plan, it may require you to get prior authorization to see a specialist or to get anything more than a basic office visit.  The companies that run these plans and require these prior authorizations defend them on the grounds that they eliminate wasteful visits, tests, and treatments.  Patients and their advocates tell a different story, however.  They say the companies use prior authorization requirements to discourage or deny needed care and save themselves billions in the process.

Even in a perfect world, prior authorization requirements would…
Continue Reading The Dreaded Prior Authorization Requirement

Just when you began to hope things could not get any worse in health care in the United States, hospitals come along to show you what a sucker you are.  The latest trend is hospitals getting in on concierge care.

Concierge care has been with us for a while, but up to now it has been confined to the practices of individual physicians.  It began in the wealthy enclaves of Boca Raton, Florida, and La Jolla, California and spread from there.  The principle is simple: patients pay an annual fee to become patients of the concierge physician.  The physician enjoys…
Continue Reading The Next Big, New Thing in Medicine Is, Of Course, Bad For You

As if we need any more proof that doctors are as human as the rest of us and as subject to life’s temptations, I offer the following stories from the recent news.

Local Mayo Clinic doctor arrested at the Phoenix Open for drunkenly assaulting woman.
Colorado doctor, whose license was suspended last year, arrested for improper touching of female patient during what police referred to as a “fake medical exam.”
Yuma doctor arrested for sexual abuse of patients.
United States Army physician serving in the State of Washington arrested for over 50 counts of alleged sexual misconduct.
New York doctor …
Continue Reading Doctors Behaving Badly

Advances in medical science often come with unintended, or at least unexpected consequences.  The more radical the advance, often the more troubling and dangerous the unexpected consequences.  Such is the case with the Impella heart pump.

Heart pumps, also known as ventricular assist devices, are intended to be inserted into the heart and take over the work of the heart in patients, who are undergoing complex heart procedures or who have certain life-threatening conditions, such as cardiogenic shock or heart damage due to a heart attack.  The device allows the body to receive good blood flow while at the same…
Continue Reading Heart Pump Problems

Doctors are not immune to the rapidly changing world that faces all of us.  The 21st Century has brought stunning changes to the world and to nearly every aspect of American society.  As a driver of change, the Covid pandemic was the cherry on top of the sundae.  Many doctors long for the world of the last century when they were highly respected, paid exceedingly well and were the masters of their practices.  Those days are long gone.

The healthcare world is no longer controlled by doctors.  Instead, it is controlled by large health insurance companies, gargantuan hospital chains, Big…
Continue Reading The World Has Changed For Doctors

Things may be changing down at the courthouse.  After years of consistent losses for people suing for medical malpractice, Arizona has recently seen some large jury verdicts in their favor.  There have been more multi-million dollar malpractice verdicts in the last 12 months than there were in many past years combined.  It is unclear whether this is a trend or whether it is just a coincidence.  If it is a trend, it is unclear what is driving it.

Historically, doctors and hospitals win 85-90% of the cases that get tried in Arizona.  The defense rate of success may be a…
Continue Reading There May Be Something Going On Down At The Courthouse

“Disclosure of medical errors and adverse outcomes is expected by regulatory agencies and society as a whole.”  This is a quotation from an article I recently read in a peer-reviewed medical journal.  Peer-reviewed journals are the gold standard for medical journals and are the most reliable and authoritative publications in the field.  Despite what the authors wrote and despite the expectations of regulatory agencies and the public, medical errors and adverse outcomes are hidden far more often than they are disclosed.

Unless they are caught red-handed with an undeniable mistake, doctors will rarely admit to their patients that something went…
Continue Reading Transparency and Disclosure – Not Going To Happen

I recently posted about what is called the “Medicare Advantage Trap,” which can make it economically impossible as a practical matter to switch from a Medicare Advantage (MA) plan to Traditional Medicare (TM), even though there is an open enrollment period each year in which eligible beneficiaries are supposed to be able to make such changes freely.  If ever there was a reason to be careful about committing to MA plans, that is an excellent one.  A recent survey of both MA and TM users has uncovered some other issues that should also be considered.

The survey was conducted in…
Continue Reading Another Reason to Pause Before Enrolling in a Medicare Advantage Plan

I hate those television commercials that encourage you to “Call now!” or risk missing out on some unbeatable deal.  The deal will usually still be there tomorrow.  However, there is one time when “Call now!” makes a lot of sense and that is when you have, or even think you may have, a medical malpractice claim.  If you don’t “Call now,” you may find that it is too late to bring your case or at least too late to get a good lawyer to agree to take it for you.

Good medical malpractice lawyers don’t take every case that comes…
Continue Reading Call Now!