Doctors say the darndest things!

Art Linkletter, where are you when we need you? Doctors, like kids, can say the darndest things, but unlike kids, too often, what they say is not very funny. Organized Medicine has, in the past few years, made some incredulous public statements which should have demanded being questioned and were, instead, quietly accepted as gospel.

AMA produced thousands of colorful, tri-fold brochures in 2003 entitled Will Your Doctor Be There? The first full paragraph of that brochure begins with the phrase, “The primary cause of America’s medical liability crisis is -----.” To properly understand that statement one should appreciate the medical significance of the first three words; “The primary cause”.

The primary cause is the bedrock of all medical intellectual endeavor and is the holy grail of diagnostic medicine. Therefore, anything described medically as “the primary cause” has been given the greatest significance. I gained great appreciation for that phrase early in my surgical training. My six month rotation on the Pathology Department staff required me to perform 35 autopsies. The goal of an autopsy is to determine the primary cause of death, as well as any secondary, contributing causes.

I have belabored the point for good reason. Medical pronouncements of “the primary cause” are not merely casual designations. Now, back to their unquestioned statement.

Greedy, overzealous attorneys are the primary cause of the medical malpractice crisis. So says that AMA brochure which was meant to be placed in doctor’s waiting rooms for patients to take home and read. Let’s see how that occurs. Someone has surgery and days, weeks or months later there is clear evidence of post-surgical problems. How, when and where did an attorney create the problem?

Doctors have caught the Great American Syndrome, “Something bad happened, but its somebody else’s fault!” Far more important, however, is the fact that no one has ever questioned the AMA to clarify the fundamental disconnect between fact and the premise of their declaration. If medical malpractice is a medically induced human fault, how can attorneys, or any other non-medical source, be “the primary cause”?

“Legally acceptable medical standard of care is set at the lowest possible rung.” That statement was made by an AMA past-president who has both a medical and a legal degree. I term this definition of legally acceptable medical care to be the “onion-skin” rule. There is an onion-skin between the legally acceptable medical standard of care and that patient care which should be judged substandard care or medical malpractice.

Notice should be taken that the AMA does not speak of where the medically acceptable medical standard of care is positioned since questionable patient care is predominately judged through the medical liability system of civil court.

That same dual-degree AMA past-president offered doctors with Organized Medicine’s latest definition of medical malpractice, also in 2003. “Medical malpractice is treatment beneath a standard of care set by the law.”

String those three statements together; attorneys are the primary cause of the malpractice crisis, legally acceptable medical standard of care is set at the lowest possible rung and medical malpractice is treatment beneath a standard of care set by the law. A very disquieting pattern seems to emerge.

Organized Medicine never declared in a colorful, tri-fold brochure widely distributed to the nation through doctor’s waiting rooms that medical malpractice litigation was the principle system for the review of questionable patient care. That revelation was never communicated to society by the profession, but the overwhelming evidence is that our medical profession chose malpractice litigation as the system of choice for the review of questionable patient care.

Organized Medicine has a litany of highly questionable statements which have completely avoided public demands for clarification. No other facet of American society appears to enjoy such unquestioned acceptance of all declarations. Strange!