Williamsport, PA, Feb. 22, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cliff Rieders believes that big medicine in Pennsylvania gets a free ride. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in 2003, issued a rule that hospitals and doctors can be sued only in the county where the alleged neglect and malpractice occurred. Pennsylvania has 67 counties, some of which are very rural and others of which are quite urban or suburban.
As one of the leading advocates in the state for medical malpractice victims, Rieders said that justice is frequently decided in Pennsylvania based upon the locale and not the truth.
“Every other business in the Commonwealth can be sued not only where neglect or breach of contract occurred, but also where it purposely avails itself of the right to do business,” Rieders said.
In other words, if a business makes money by operating in a particular county, it is subject to being sued there. That is the law throughout the United States on both the federal and state levels. This is mandated by due process, which says that when somebody chooses a particular state or county in which to do business, they subject themselves to the rule of law in that location.
“The medical industry attempts to justify handcuffing injured patients by permitting them to sue only where the neglect happened, because the big medical institutions, which are often affiliated with insurance companies, want to be able to do business everywhere while restricting lawsuits to counties where they will be most favorably treated,” Rieders said.
The medical defense industry accuses injured patients and their lawyers of “forum shopping,” though Rieders said there is no such thing.
“People cannot sue wherever they want, but only where the negligence occurred or where the institution is found doing business on a regular basis,” he said. “One can have a case moved based upon inconvenience, but the burden is on the party wanting to move the case to prove it should be moved.”
Doctors and hospitals complain that medical malpractice rates were high in 2003. Rieders said that, at that time, the insurance industry was ripping off doctors and hospitals by charging a lot of money. Some of those insurance companies were corrupt and either went bankrupt or their officials were charged with crimes. Now, many doctors and hospitals self-insure, making insurance more affordable.
Rieders also said that Pennsylvania’s record of physician discipline is terrible. Usually, doctors are disciplined in this Commonwealth only when there is a criminal conviction. Bad doctors continue to practice medicine, he said.
Proponents of keeping the existing law as it is claim that doctors will leave the state and hospitals will shutter their doors if existing rules change, a claim that Rieders says is false.
“Pennsylvania has had a steady growth of both doctors and extenders since records were first kept in 1972,” Rieders said. “There are between approximately 42,000 and 44,000 doctors and extenders in Pennsylvania, even though there has been a sharp drop in the population. This means that the ratio of doctors to patients has actually improved dramatically for patients.”
There are more doctors per patient than ever before in the history of this Commonwealth. Doctors and hospitals want to be in Pennsylvania, Rieders said.
Literature from the medical industry shows that preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. Rieders said that we tolerate more from the medical industry than we do from others.
“The number of deaths due to medical errors can be compared to two 747s crashing each month with a loss of all lives aboard. Who would tolerate such a thing?” asked Rieders. “Yet, we tolerate that in the medical industry all the time. Ten percent of the patients who go in hospitals will wind up with hospital-acquired infections. It is extremely difficult to sue for infections because the hospitals and doctors claim that infections are just in the air, and there is nothing they can do about that. Those claims are false, and properly run hospitals can dramatically reduce infections. If the rate of infections were lowered in this country, the cost of healthcare would be dramatically less.”
The Patient Safety Authority, which is composed mainly of doctors and hospitals, receives over 300,000 reports of incidents and serious events every year. This represents underreporting. Serious events in 2017 demonstrate incidents of 21,999 per month, and serious events are 657 per month. Yet, in a year the number of filed legal cases is approximately 1,400.
Rieders said that the reason hospitals do not like to report serious events is that, under the law, serious events must also be reported to the Department of Health and to the patients.
“They do not want patients to know the truth,” Rieders said. “Secretive peer review is a problem. Hospitals may, at times, look into why bad things happen in the hospitals but all of that is kept secret under the law. That law must be changed.”
The cost of insurance for doctors and the claims payout for medical malpractice cases is remarkably low. The payouts for medical malpractice cases in this entire country, according to the medical authorities, is less than one percent of the total national healthcare bill.
“Simply stated, the real problem is that not enough patients actually recover for preventable medical errors,” Rieders said. “All hospitals should be subject to a ‘report card.’ Patients should be able to know infection rates and success rates for procedures in every single hospital in the United States. There should be open peer review. Patients should be able to get their medical records without outrageous costs and bureaucracy. Most importantly, patients should be compensated for preventable medical errors.”
Clifford A. Rieders is a Pennsylvania personal injury attorney and partner at Rieders, Travis, Humphrey, Waters & Dohrmann. He has authored many books about various areas of legal practice in Pennsylvania.
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