Love the last paragraph though.

You know and I know that I never said that I don’t want civil cases. That’s a huge misrepresentation. I want a fair civil system. The current system is not fair.
I’ve advocated a “loser pays” civil system. You just make up excuses why the US can’t follow the lead of the rest of civilized society in implementing it.

I also never said that I don’t want customer satisfaction surveys. I only assert that the statistical methods used to compare the surveys need to be sound. Currently, they are nowhere close to being sound.

And if you want to allow criminalization of every profession on its judgment calls, go for it. Costs and bureaucracy will skyrocket because few will be willing to leave decisions to judgment lest they lose their freedom. Society would be so well served, wouldn’t it?
Let’s add prosecutors and judges to the list while we’re at it.

This isn’t an issue of accountability and you know it. When we don’t scrutinize egregious acts of those holding us “accountable” we encourage those in power to continue acting egregiously.

Your problems are that you lack both foresight and insight, that you are prone to confabulation, and that you obviously have little knowledge about some of the issues upon which you opine.

The chance that the “best possible work” will land him in jail or on skid row is so infinitesimal as to be nonexistent.

Whitecoat works in a field where every treatment has the potential of someone dying, and doesn’t like the fact that his best possible work may still land him in jail for manslaughter (or skid row for malpractice). We generally like to believe that criminal and civil penalties only attach for doing something wrong.

In the case from Italy that I highlighted, reaction from the scientific world has been dumfounded disbelief. More specific details on what went down:
http://www.nature.com/news/shock-and-law-1.11643

Whitecoat likes to bemoan what’s happening to our country, but it’s not really local to the U.S. – it’s generalizing to western society worldwide.

In the case of Italy, if they ever ask me a question in my professional capacity (which isn’t medical), I’m going to tell them to piss off, I refuse to reply on grounds that doing my job might get me thrown in jail.

We expect such behavior from barbarian dictatorships (remember the Bulgarian nurses in Libya?), but we’re surprised when ostensibly civilized countries pull this kind of stunt.

We have to jump through more hoops to get paid, are expected to run around like crazy to treat patients, many of whom aren’t really emergency patients. We get assaulted & at least in my hospital, aren’t allowed to press charges. And we get sued or charged with criminal charges. It just keeps getting worse.

Is this healthcare reform?

You want to hold doctors to one standard – the “does WC think it’s wrong” standard based solely on what HE knows about the case. You don’t seem to believe any other group can get it right.

Your problem may be less with the systems we have designed to handle this than recognizing you may be wrong sometimes or may not know all the facts.

As for the State medical boards – I’m too afraid to publicly slam them lest they find out my true identity and decide to crack down on me for no good reason like they have done to so many others.