Put your Med Mal I.Q. to the Test!

I bet after acing a half dozen or so of our PopTort Medical Malpractice Pop Quizzes (here are the last couple), you think you’re some kind of brainiac! Not so fast. The Center for Justice & Democracy has just published its newest Medical Malpractice Briefing Book update, so it’s time to put your 2018 knowledge to the test. Let’s see how well you do now!

1. According to PIAA, the medical malpractice insurance industry’s main trade and lobbying association (and as reported by the American Medical Association), over the past decade both average and median medical malpractice paid claims have shot up:

1. 100 percent
2. 25 percent
3. 1 percent
4. Nothing

This answer is "d" – nada! No matter how you look at it according to PIAA, claim payments have been unchanged for the decade. I wonder if PIAA, the AMA or their state counterparts mention this fact when lobbying Congress or states – not to mention in advertising to voters (like in Arkansas right now) – as they push for government-imposed limits on compensation to injured patients? Rhetorical question.

2. Speaking of honesty, here’s another insurance question we've wondered about. True or False: Insurance companies are struggling to make a profit because they have not raised medical malpractice insurance rates on doctors for well over a decade.

Well, it’s partly True. Rates have been stable since 2006. But the rest is plainly False, and that’s according to the April 2018 Medical Liability Monitor, an industry trade publication. Let us explain. 

Insurance companies make their money from investment income, investing the premiums they collect in the stock market and other places.  According to 2017’s year-end results, 2017, was “another profitable year- with increases in net income and surplus relative to 2016, driven by promising investment performance.…It is the composite’s investment performance – specifically the capital gains taken from the soaring 2017 financial markets – that gets credit for the increase in net income.”

3. Now let’s switch to patients, who are the actual victims when talking about medical malpractice (i.e., not hospitals, doctors or insurance companies, although you'd never know it from their lobby groups or advertising firms). Among the types of misconduct committed by doctors who have been barred from practicing in one state, only to “hopscotch” to and continue practicing in another state, are:

1. Peddling opioids
2. Having sex with patients
3. Botching surgeries
4. Killing patients
5. None of the above
6. All of the above

The answer is "f." According to a MedPage Today/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigative series, “At least 500 physicians” who have engaged in that sort of misconduct and “who have been publicly disciplined, chastised or barred from practicing by one state medical board have been allowed to practice elsewhere with a clean license. And their patients are kept in the dark – even as more become victims – thanks to an antiquated system shrouded in secrecy.”

4. Similarly, here’s a timely True or False question: The #MeToo movement has led to important changes at state medical boards regarding how they deal with physicians who sexually abuse patients or staffers.

Ha, if only. The answer is False.  An April 2018 Associated Press investigation, suitably titled, “Doctors keep licenses despite sex abuse,” found, “Decades of complaints that the physician disciplinary system is too lenient on sex-abusing doctors have produced little change in the practices of state medical boards. And the #MeToo campaign and the rapid push in recent months to increase accountability for sexual misconduct in American workplaces do not appear to have sparked a movement toward changing how medical boards deal with physicians who act out sexually against patients or staffers. … [A]cross the country, most doctors accused of sexual misconduct avoid a medical license review entirely.”

5. Turning now to the category of C-sections, in her article “The C-Section Epidemic: What's Tort Reform Got to Do with It?,” Rutgers Law School Professor Sabrina Safrin introduced the issue this way: “Conventional wisdom holds that the overuse of the C-section is largely attributable to defensive medicine, itself an overreaction to physicians’ concerns about malpractice liability exposure.” So what about that – is it True or False?

It’s False, according to Professor Safrin herself! She writes, “new aggregate empirical data on national cesareans rates for births subject to damages caps vs. those without damages caps ‘debunks this view.’ … Although about half the states in the Union have had non-economic damage caps in place for at least eight years, our aggregate data shows that women are just as likely to give birth by cesarean section in states with damage caps as in ones without such caps.”

6. And your final question. Which of the following makes a doctor more likely to commit a medical error:

1. Burnout
2. Depression
3. Poorer quality of life
4. Emotional exhaustion
5. None of the above.
6. All of the above.

Welp, the answer is "f," as if that would be any surprise to any human. It’s backed up by a new study from the Mayo Clinic-Rochester, published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, “suggesting a bidirectional relationship between medical errors and distress.”   

Anyone else feeling a bit of “distress” these days? Thought so. Just stay out of the hospital, if possible.