Then Again, What are Doctors For?

We trust doctors, right? When we go into hospitals, we expect that they will always be able to fix us, to patch us up and send us on our merry way. Or at the very least, that they will be able to diagnose us and set our minds at ease.

Usually, and we use that term loosely, people exit the hospital feeling a lot better than they did coming in. That’s nice; that’s the way things should be, but not all doctors and hospitals have integrity coursing through their veins; some, either by accident or on purpose, make a mistake that sends you spiraling into the abyss of hurt and debt. We’ve been seeing that a lot this summer, the summer of malpractice – and one area of the country that is afflicted with malpractice is Florida, where medical malpractice lawsuits are becoming the strange and dangerous norm, as reported in this Jacksonville.com article.

Wayne Oliver writes, “Physicians fearful of litigation have turned to defensive medicine. This costs all Floridians more than $40 billion per year. According to the Gallup Organization, this accounts for as much as 26 percent of overall health care spending. A proposal called the Patients’ Compensation System is intended to transform the broken medical malpractice system in Florida and preserve the physician-patient relationship.”

Wow. That’s a bit of an understatement, saying that Florida has a broken medical malpractice system. The system is up in flames – and that might not even be a strong enough image to convey what’s going on down there, but we’ll stick to it. There are so many medical malpractice lawsuits going on that Floridians believe it’s normal, to have a doctor or hospital screw up That is a sad norm – patients ready to sue and doctors practicing defensive medicine.

We hope the relationship improves down there. It’ll certainly take a few years to salvage the relationship. Here’s what we think: doctors and hospitals screw up. They shouldn’t, but they do, and sometimes the system will try to take advantage of a patient. We won’t let that happen. To truly preserve the physician-patient relationship, the bad apples must be removed from the bunch.