Personal Injury Law

Regulation of Missouri Doctors and Potential Medical Malpractice One of the Weakest in the Country

By Benjamin J. Sansone, Esq.

St Louis Post Dispatch: Study says state medical boards don't punish dangerous doctors:

Last year, our investigation of the health care system portrayed the agency that regulates Missouri doctors as one of the nation's weakest.

As a practicing St Louis area Missouri medical malpractice attorney, I can tell you from experience that the reporting of serious complications and doctor mistakes rarely happens. Most of it is either not reported at all or hid within the hospital's risk management office behind the "peer review" shield. Which is in place because doctors and hospitals claim if reporting of complications were public that would discourage the actual reporting of it - BUT IT IS NOT BEING REPORTED ANYWAY! On average 8 per year are reported!

An analysis by the Post-Dispatch showed that from 2004 through 2008, Missouri's 140 hospitals reported 41 actions against 32 doctors - or a little more than eight a year.

One such St Louis medical negligence lawsuit I handled involved a doctor that I cannot name, but by the time we were done with the case had uncovered multiple deaths and dozens of serious complications caused by outright neglect and gross negligence. This doctor was never reported to the Missouri board of healing arts until after our case and it took us years to get the records of all his problems through court action and from the hospital he practiced at. Thankfully, that doctor's surgical privileges have been suspended indefinitely. That St Louis wrongful death case settled for 4.5 Million dollars.

Post Dispatch article also stated:

As long ago as 1996, a government agency concluded that the number of hospital reports was "unreasonably low." It has gotten even lower. In 2008, the number of reports was three-fourths of the 1996 total, according to the newspaper's analysis.

Under reporting of Missouri medical mistakes allows bad doctors to go unchecked, but sooner or later they make a mistake that cannot be hidden, but by that time it is too late, it already cost someone their life, just like what happened in this St Louis wrongful death case settled by injury attorney Ben Sansone.

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Law Blog on April 01, 2011 (boomark / email).