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Mynewadventures t1_ira6kf7 wrote

Reply to comment by WhoWhatWhereWhenHowY in The N.H. surgeon who had the worst record for malpractice death settlements by ChristopherDuntsch

I agree. It sounds hyperbolic, but there is such a loooooong history of policies and laws that are created in a knee jerk way that has terrible consequences a few decades down the road.

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ANewMachine615 t1_ira8yqj wrote

So how is a consumer supposed to make an informed choice about a health care provider, if arguably the most critical information - their rate of legally culpable fuckups - is hidden from them? Insurers, hospitals, doctors, etc. All have incentives to hide this. Only wronged patients, who lack power and coordination, have an incentive here - and one of the requirements for most settlements is confidentiality.

Does MA have a social credit system? Are they China? And yet they make this info public.

What an absurd concern.

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hardsoft t1_iraor1o wrote

The info is available (hence the article). Just not consolidated on a government site. Not to mention online reviews and such.

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vexingsilence t1_iraoncr wrote

This is a problem with settlements in general. There's often a public interest in the matter but the public is left in the dark. It can be medical, it can be police misconduct, it can be a homebuilder, anything. There can be instances where your town pays out a settlement which comes out of your property tax, but you don't even get to know the terms of the settlement. It's absurd.

Medical is worse in that doctors can't fix everything. Just because there was a negative outcome, doesn't mean there was malpractice involved. But people get lawyers involved and off it goes. The defendants may settle just to avoid the cost of dragging it through the courts. That doesn't mean they did anything wrong, it just means at minimum, it was more cost effective to do a payout than it was to put up a defense.

The uglier side of this is that if you're a patient needing a procedure that has a significant failure rate, even if you find the doctors and facility that has the best outcomes, they may decline to do the procedure because of the risk of litigation if it does go wrong. Been there, done that, not a good time.

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Mynewadventures t1_ira96mk wrote

I wasn't saying a solution isn't needed, and my concern is far from absurd.

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ANewMachine615 t1_iradocs wrote

A licensed professional whose job frequently involves cutting people open having some disclosure responsibilities when they screw up and harm others in legally liable ways, is nowhere near the slippery slope you want it to be.

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HPenguinB t1_iraco7k wrote

It really is absurd. I don't even care about this conversation, and suddenly "Yelp reviews leads to complete fascism," is hella absurd.

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