Tom Seery, CEO, RealSelf First announced in the technology blog techcrunch, Google made a significant change this week to the way patient reviews of doctors (and all local businesses) get displayed in Google Places. This has important implications for online doctor reputations. Prior to this week, reviews from 3rd party sites were used to develop [...]

Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. On July 25th, the North Carolina House of Representatives overrode the Governor’s veto of substantive tort reform. The North Carolina Senate overrode the veto last week. The bill will now become law. This effort began decades ago and was finally realized [...]

Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS I doubt that lately, few subjects have been studied, discussed or argued as much as the effects that frivolous lawsuits have on the nation’s healthcare system. This summer, three more studies looked at this problem from various vantage points. First, Jackson Healthcare investigated whether physicians working under contract with the [...]

Michael J. Sacopulos, Esq. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled that the medical malpractice statutes of the state cover a patient’s death from a spider bite. Classie Reed was a patient at the Omaha Health Care Center when she was bitten by a brown recluse spider. The spider bite ultimately resulted in [...]

From the Medical Board of California The Board has been advised that several physicians in the Los Angeles area have been contacted by an individual impersonating an Investigator with the Medical Board of California.  The individual asks physicians for their social security number and a credit card number, threatening cancellation of their license. This individual [...]

Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS CNN.com recently reported the case of Elaine Farstad. An IT specialist from Everett, WA, who became angry when her physician was late for a scheduled appointment, Ms. Farstad calculated her hourly wage rate and billed her doctor for the time she had to wait – to the tune of $100. [...]