Doctors, dentists and certain other health care professionals have different worries to add to that bundle. They worry about being sued for malpractice. They don’t generally worry about doing a bad job that leads to such a suit. They worry about some greedy and unscrupulous trial lawyer thinking of them as the fatted calf, seeing them as an opportunity to get rich quickly. That concern is far from unfounded. All too often, trial lawyers see doctors exactly like that…

Dr. Segal’s article, “Doctor-to-Doctor: The Administration Promises “Budget Dust” To Fix Medical Malpractice Morass” was just published by the Center for Health Transformation’s Health Reform Report. Read the article here.

Recently, a defense attorney hosted Malpractice 101 on the physician social networking site, sermo.com. A multitude of questions were answered. Sprinkled in the answers was the conclusion the tort system has a number of salutary effects – namely patient safety. The moderator recited the (now stale) observation from the 1980’s. To paraphrase: Anesthesiologists embraced pulse [...]

Medical Justice CEO, Dr. Jeff Segal, was recently featured on the ReachMD radio program “Preventing Frivolous Lawsuits and Frivolous Testimony,” hosted by Shane Jackson, Executive Vice President of Jackson Healthcare/President, LocumTenens.com.  Dr. Segal shared his experience of being sued, and his expertise in the areas of defensive medicine, frivolous lawsuits, frivolous testimony, and non-legislative solutions [...]

Much of the country may be fatigued by the wrangling over healthcare reform, but to allow this ill-conceived plan to continue into practice would be a far greater burden than to revisit the subject.

“The RAND study shows that physician ratings conducted by insurers can be wrong up to two-thirds of the time for some groups of physicians,” said AMA President J. James Rohack. … Even if the flawed results are put aside, it’s still apples and oranges. If a lower-cost upscale NYC physician moves to the cornfields of Kansas, is he suddenly a high risk by comparison?