Re: Brain damaged baby case (long)

From: Lynn Montgomery, MD (apgar10@qwest.net)
Wed Mar 29 09:33:48 2006


Now I am not advocating suing physicians, but let me play the devil's advocate here based on my personal experience:

-Current hospital setting without ANY quality assurance in the OB Section for eight years.

-Two JCAHO inspections during that time and passed with flying colors.

-Several previous hospitals with QA programs, but when deficiencies identified, no action is taken.

-At least two instances where a significant problem was identified with patient management where the physician refused to respond to any inquiry on advice from his counsel - despite the supposed confidentiality of peer review. No action taken regarding the cases.

-Two and now possibly three physicians with a literal stack of charts with untoward outcomes. QA recommendation that privileges be suspended pending additional training, etc, only to be laughed at by hospital counsel who state that we will all be sued and the suspension will not likely stand.

So, given these issues, how are we supposed to accomplish "Physician police thy self". And if we cannot police ourselves, which we have apparently shown we can't; who is going to?

It is easy to be critical of lawyers suing us, but I feel that we bear a good share of the responsibility by engendering a "good ole boys club" and rubber stamping our peer's practice patterns, whether appropriate or not - fearing that if we are critical of a peer's practice patterns, we may be next.

I learned quality assurance from Bob Carpenter and Ray Kaufman and have been struggling my entire career to duplicate their approach, only to be met with frustration at every turn.

Lynn





use when must restrict search to only the ob-gyn-l forum...
Enter search keywords:
Returns per screen: Require all keywords:

Return to  OB-GYN-L Mail a New Message to the Forum: ob-gyn-l@obgyn.net
Forum Administrator: geffrey.klein@obgyn.net
Report Technical Problems: webmaster@obgyn.net
Last Updated: Wed Jul 2 04:43:13 2008

The American Medical Association is no longer designating CME hours for AMA Category II CME credit. However, physicians themselves may self designate learning activities as Category II CME credit hours if they feel it is of sufficient educational merit and meets the formal definitions of continuing medical education. OBGYN.net believes these interaction in this forum meets these criteria. For further information see the AMA web site.