It is a time-honored theme in science fiction and horror movies. The small, seemingly harmless creature that grows and grows until it is so powerful, no one can stop it and it wreaks damage far and wide. This is an apt description of where we find ourselves with our nation’s hospital system. It is an out-of-control behemoth that is too big to tame and is destroying everything in its path.

As any regular reader of this blog knows, we are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not offer universal health care…
Continue Reading The Monster In Our Midst

The Depression era bank robber, Willie Sutton, is famously reported to have said he robbed banks because, “That’s where the money is.” In today’s medicine, the money is in cosmetic surgery and the good doctors, the bad doctors, and the private equity investors are flocking to cash in.

Necessary medical procedures are usually covered by insurance while elective cosmetic surgery procedures are not. Insurance often caps the amount a surgeon can charge for a procedure. Since cosmetic procedures are usually paid for by the patient out of his or her own pocket, the only limit to…
Continue Reading Plastic Surgery Chains

In the over fifty years I have been practicing law, on a few occasions I have succumbed to the temptation to take a case in a field with which I was not familiar. I regret those decisions. I made mistakes due to my lack of familiarity. Thankfully my clients did not suffer any harm from my errors. I hope the lawyers among you learn from my mistakes.

Over the last 45 years, I have spent most of my time working in the area of medical malpractice litigation. I started out defending doctors…
Continue Reading Hey, Lawyers, Resist The Urge To Dabble

The False Claims Act has been around for over 150 years. It makes it against the law to knowingly submit a false claim to the federal government. It provides for civil penalties as well as criminal ones. The government is entitled to three times the amount it actually lost as a result of the false claims.

The statute also has a whistleblower provision which allows someone with knowledge of a false claim to file suit to recover the improper payments on behalf of the federal government. The government has the option of taking…
Continue Reading Alleged Fraudulent Claims Close To Home

I have written often about the flaws in the Medicare Advantage program. It seemed a good idea when it was conceived. Pay private insurance companies a fixed amount to provide necessary medical care to a Medicare enrollee. If it costs less than the fixed amount to care for the beneficiary, the company gets to keep the difference. If it costs more, the company has to pay the extra. The taxpayers get certainty and the expected advantage of a private company that can provide health care efficiently. Medicare Advantage was touted as a win-win that would save the taxpayers money. Except…
Continue Reading We All Pay For Medicare Advantage Abuses

As everyone knows, today’s medicine is complicated. In addition, to being complicated, the medical care delivery system is operated by human beings with all their frailties. Mistakes are bound to occur and do with depressing frequency. While there are almost an infinite number of ways medical care can be screwed up, there are some common categories we see over and over again.

• MIDIAGNOSIS AND DELAYED DIAGNOSIS

Misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis are closely related. In both cases the medical professionals fail to accurately interpret the information they have available to them and fail to properly…
Continue Reading Common Forms of Medical Malpractice

There is a wise old saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Even when something seems as though it may be free, there is always a price being charged or paid somewhere. This is true of medicine as well. There is nothing in medicine that is without some risk. The key to successful medical treatment is accurate assessment of the risk of the proposed treatment and accurate assessment of the benefits of the proposed treatment.

Certainty in life would be helpful. Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world in which…
Continue Reading There Is No Free Lunch

This isn’t my idea. It was the subject of a great article I recently read written by an emergency department physician. She had just returned from a visit to her local Trader Joe’s (TJ’s). While there she had noted the happy, friendly employees, the local flavor of the store, the satisfied customers, and the good value of the products being sold. She asked why healthcare could not adopt some of the approaches that have made TJ’s such a thriving company. She made a very persuasive case.

As the doctor noted,…
Continue Reading Why Can’t Healthcare Systems Be More Like Trader Joe’s?

Some of those who read this blog live in Arizona. We have no caps on the recovery an injured patient can make, although the legislature has taken away other patient rights in an attempt to make it more difficult for an injured patient to win a malpractice suit. For those of you in other states, many of you are subject to caps on malpractice awards. In those states, no matter how badly you are injured or what the jury awards you, the jury award will be reduced to the cap amount for your state. Some of those caps are only…
Continue Reading Medical Malpractice Tort Reform Is A Fraud

When a loved one dies as the result of the fault of another, Arizona law provides a remedy in the form of its wrongful death statutes. Unlike most personal injuries, the common law of England, from which our personal injury law descends, did not recognize death as an injury for which those left behind could sue and recover damages. As a result, legislatures, including Arizona’s, passed wrongful death statutes to create a remedy. Since wrongful death claims are a creature of statute, they vary from state to state and depend entirely on the provisions of the wrongful death statute of…
Continue Reading Wrongful Death Claims in Arizona

“You have a good medical malpractice case.”

These are seven words you never want me or any other medical malpractice lawyer to tell you. The reason is that every “good” medical malpractice case involves a catastrophic injury or death.

Juries are human. Humans avoid things which make them uncomfortable. Knowing that the medical professionals to whom we entrust our lives and those of our loved ones make mistakes that kill and injure people on a regular basis is deeply disturbing. Because of this deep-seated need to believe in doctors and hospitals, juries are reluctant to find against them in malpractice…
Continue Reading The Seven Words You Never Want To Hear

Every day it seems we learn more about the many life forms that live inside our bodies. Viruses, bacteria, and fungi all live inside us and have the power to greatly affect our health. In addition to the gut microbiome that seems to get all the attention, there is a mouth microbiome which has only recently begun to be closely studied.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly forms of cancer. In its earliest stages, when it is most susceptible to treatment, it has few symptoms and is only rarely discovered. When…
Continue Reading Reduce Your Risk of Pancreatic Cancer

What would you do if you ran a business that regularly had trials with millions of dollars potentially at stake and you needed to hire a lawyer to try those cases for you? How would you go about selecting that lawyer. I can pretty much guarantee that you wouldn’t choose based on seeing someone’s picture on a highway billboard or on the side of a bus.

This is the problem faced by medical malpractice insurance companies. They insure lots of doctors. They promise to defend those doctors, if they get sued, and to pay any…
Continue Reading The Defense Malpractice Attorney