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For starters, get the HMO's and the lawyers off the doctors butts and you will once again attract the "best and brightest" to the field.
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Whhooooa there! Just a durned minute saw-bones!
While I certainly admire your PROFESSIONAL LOYALTY you are WAY over the line pinning what is a CLEAR CUT case of medical malpractice on lawyers and HMOS.
This wasn't a COMBAT situation with bullets flying over the heads of the trauma docs. . .it has long been established as STANDARD OF CARE that you count instruments and sponges.
And don't give me the, "This is a county hospital, the doctors that work there aren't "bright" enough." If we have people being certified to practice medicine who don't get the basic idea that you don't leave surgical instruments in the patient then maybe we better go back to letting BARBERS do medicine!
We can debate Med-Mal, Tort Reform, Capitation, HMOs, Medicare reform and the virtues of traditional indemnity insurance all day long, but that doesn't change for a SECOND the fact that the standard of care was seriously violated. And no amount of making excuses for the situation is going to change that, either in the eyes of the patient, the law or the public.
In the law, we call it "
Res Ipsa Loquitur" - The thing speaks for itself. Leaving a 5 inch clamp inside the PT is an act so egregious that you don't even have to prove the first couple elements of a traditional negligence claim (which are, that the Defendant owed the Plaintiff a legal duty, and breached that duty, which breach was a proximate cause of the Plaintiff's injuries). The mere fact of a clamp left in this guy's body is enough to have the Med-Mal carrier settle faster than you can say, "there are no bad risks, only bad premiums."
What's next, the "code of silence?"
