Re: ??? Economic Losses from a Malpractice Suit ???

From: Charlie Chambers (cchamber@gorge.net)
Mon Apr 22 16:10:38 2002


I think on some of those you do have a point. I do think there is quite a bit of time spent during office hours. But to my way of thinking, that's the least of the loss. It's how it affects your life, your practice, your attitude to other patients, our atmosphere of defensive medicine that is quite immeasurable but certainly more injurious in the long run than any economic loss.

On Monday, April 22, 2002, at 07:40 AM, Dr Don Miller wrote:

> I wonder if others on this list would have an opinion (or better yet,
> data) about economic losses from a single malpractice suit. Although a
> single suit carries a personal and professional toll on those involved,
> it seems to me that the toll is primarily non-quantifiable in terms of
> dollars and cents and may in fact be negligible. We have insurance that
> pays for the lawyers and any settlements. Once sued we spend scores of
> hours reviewing, preparing, deposing, litigating, etc. each case but
> for the most part this is done off-hours on our personal time, or we
> have colleagues that cover for us, and our patients don't go away but
> simply reschedule. All of that doesn't influence our economic
> production, i.e. take us away from the every day business of generating
> revenue by seeing patients and doing procedures, and probably doesn't
> have a great effect on our bottom line (unless we lose our license to
> practice). We may think our time away from our families and diversions
> is worth something, but in economic terms, no one is going to reimburse
> us in cash for that.
>
> So, can we quantitate ANY economic losses from a single filed
> malpractice suit?
>
************************************************************************* Charlie Chambers Hood River, OR

--
cchamber@alumni.rice.edu

"No matter where you go... there you are." Dr. Buckaroo Banzai ************************************************************************





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