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IMAGE SOURCE: Medical Justice Web site
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Go to a doctor and besides the mountain of forms covering insurance and pre-existing conditions, you might find a new requirement to sign before the doctor agrees to treat you.
Nationwide, about 2,000 doctors have joined Medical Justice, a Greensboro, North Carolina company that provides the forms to patients, who by signing, essentially agree to forego their right to post negative comments about doctors on the internet.
Medical Justice founder, neurosurgeon, Dr. Jeffrey Segal, founded the company in 2002 to prevent so-called “frivolous lawsuits” a favorite phrase of the business-backed tort reform campaign. Medical Justice launched the internet libel effort in 2007.
The Medical Justice Web site says Dr. Segal “has established himself as one of the country’s leading authorities on medical malpractice issues, counterclaims and internet-based assaults on reputation.”
Patients who sign the “Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy” form promise they “will not denigrate, defame, disparage or cast aspersions upon,” the doctor and will prevent friends and family from doing so as well.
The prohibition applies to a service like Angie’s List, which launched a health-care rating service in March.
Founder, Angie Hicks told Florida Health News in an e-mail, “ As a consumer advocate, I would oppose this practice as nothing short of an attempt to steal the consumers’ right to free speech.”
Angie’s List requires contributors to post their names. The Medical Justice form applies whether a person makes a comment anonymously or not.
A woman who sent Florida Health News a copy of such an agreement used by a Brandon, Florida neurosurgeon suggested it be called a “gag order.” She said her mother decided to seek another surgeon rather than sign it.
“We’re not opposed to free speech,” Segal said to the publication. “The problem is the whole notion of being able to post anything you want. The physician can’t defend himself.”
Doctors Feel The Pressure
On his Web site, Dr. Segal talks about how Medical Justice can help doctors who, “Feel the pressure.”
“Each year many groundless medical malpractice suits are initiated against health care providers. Physicians are pressured to settle frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits in order to minimize their financial risk. Damaging physician's reputations. Creating undue stress. And greatly increasing medical malpractice insurance premiums. The legal system leaves physicians vulnerable to frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits filed by unethical plaintiffs, attorneys, and "expert" witnesses. – Justice can be yours.”
Medical Justice claims that joining the group provides a deterrence to lawsuits. Members practicing medicine in “crisis states” such as Florida have a less than two percent medical malpractice rate compared to eight to 12 percent nationwide, the Web site says.
As part of its service, Medical Justice will scan sites that rate physicians for postings on members. Segal says having a patient sign the agreement gives the member a way to have the posting removed for up to five years after the patient’s last day of treatment.
The Story Behind Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
In his book, The Medical Malpractice Myth (University of Chicago Press, 2006), author Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, looked at the history, statistics, and politics of the medical malpractice debate.
He is not pro-doctor or anti-lawyer.
He suggests that medical malpractice lawsuits exist because there is too much medical malpractice and that not enough victims sue after malpractice occurs.
A lawsuit serves the purpose of bringing the bad doctors, hospitals and policies to light improving patient safety, he suggests. Without lawsuits, Baker says it is the victim who is bearing the real cost of medical malpractice.
“Medical malpractice lawsuits promote traditional American values like access to justice, personal responsibility, and freedom from intrusive government regulation,” he writes.
The tort reform movement coined the phrase, “frivolous lawsuits” to mean those that lack evidence of substandard care or treatment-related injury. Frivolous lawsuits drive up the cost of health care, says the movement, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
A Harvard School of Public Health study challenges that view.
The study from May 2006 finds most malpractice claims involve medical error and serious injury, and conclude “portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation are overblown,”
The American Association for Justice (AAJ), representing trial attorneys, says the vast majority of victims of medical malpractice never pursue taking a doctor to court.
One among eight people injured by medical malpractice, ever files a malpractice claim, Harvard finds.
Ray De Lorenzi, press secretary for the AAJ cites a May 2006 Harvard School of Public Health study that finds most malpractice claims involve medical error and serious injury, and conclude “portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation are overblown,”
An expert panel from the Institute of Medicine reported in 1999, that medical errors kill from 44,000 to 98,000 Americans each year.
HealthGrades, a hospital rating organizations, in its fifth annual report in 2008, says that medical errors are costing us billions and leading to preventable deaths. It suggests if low-performing hospitals could reach top-ranked hospitals, there were be 37,000 fewer deaths annually and a savings of about $2 billion. #