[mikester]

I don't know if I would call them all fishing expeditions...

My experience is limited which might make me the average person.

Recently my wife's father was in the hospital - most of the first half of his year until his death a couple of months ago.

He had Parkinson's and it was very advanced. He was also out of state and living in a convalescence home. We would get calls occasionally telling from the home or the hospital telling us he was there but not every time. It was a very rough time for us being so far away from him. We would go there every couple of weekend - well, my wife would and we also had some good friends help out.

The Dr. would tell her that she could call "anytime, just call my message service and they will page me." But every single time we would call that message service absolutely refused to page that particular Dr. Absolutely. They would page the on call Dr, but not the one who told use "Page me anytime." This was very frustrating to us, especially my wife who would get a call from the home saying "we sent him to the hospital again" and then not be able to get a hold of anyone at the hospital. The on call Dr. was of course no help in giving us simple information on her father's condition. Also, it wasn't appropriate for us to page the on call Dr. for information and not an emergency. So, while this paging service isn't a Dr. on call you can bet that if we had a malpractice suit in this case (which we don't at all) they would be named in the suit if possible.

The Dr. said to us with nurses present as witnesses "If you need to talk to me, please call my paging service and they will contact me immediately."

We were never, ever able to get this to happen and the Dr. was not concerned with this problem. Luckily there were other Dr.s attending to her father as well as nurses who took good care of him and great care of my Wife when she needed it.

So, as much as I feel for your Dr. Friend here and I also agree that mal insurance is over priced I must contest that all those considered in malpractice suits may have minimal involvement but when someone's life is in question even the smallest responsibility is responsibility none the less. It's a very frustrating predicament and I am not sure I agree with it but I am having trouble arguing with it. Your Dr Friend probably did right in that on call instance but she was still involved in the care of the patient. I don’t think the lawyer’s are to blame here I think the insurance company is.