Dear Lili,

 

Welcome to our group.  I am so sorry to hear of your ordeal and the loss of your dear husband.   This happens daily all across the country.   I just learned of a case where the defendant won, (most usually do), during that trial in testimony,  a doctor told a jury that an unwritten rule of medicine is that "if it is not charted, it did not happen".  My, how many times I have heard that.  Yet, this jury felt that the hospital and providers did not provide substandard care and the plaintiffs not only lost, but ended up with a horrific judgment against a young widow and her three little children who were only searching for answers and justice, not financial gain.  
Welcome to the world of the band aid tort reformers.   Instead of getting to the root of the reasons for these lawsuits, tort reformers wish to continue with an archaic and costly system where no one wins.  The present system is broken, and the only way to fix it is to find other ways to deal with this problem.  Address the reasons for the lawsuits, do not stifle them.

I am posting   two excellent examples on full disclosure and quick settlement, in both projects, the hospitals were able to save a great deal of money.   The reason that our present system does not work is because all events are mixed in a hodgepodge of ignorance.   No one seems to know the difference between a medical error, a unavoidable adverse outcome, negligence or criminal negligence until millions of dollars are spent on litigation and expert reviews, testimonies, etc.   If the energy and resources were put into finding the cause of adverse outcome, disclosure and support for the victims, instead of playing the blame game and wasting precious time and money, our system would recover.   Please look at the links that I have included, and I would like to hear why these new innovative ideas have not taken off.    Perhaps we, the consumers are the ones who must first learn this and teach it to our providers, one at a time.     Most providers are doing the best that they can, they are just like us, caught up in this storm that few feel can be calmed.  So, just we,  the survivors, the providers just move on with their lives hoping someone else does something about it.   
We must realize that we are that someone else, and we must find ways to teach them that there is hope.  Only then will something change.   We can mandate all we want, but without the real hope of  solutions to these problems, nothing will ever change.  Please check out the next two posts.

 

Your Moderator.