Hah! There’s research going back to the 1920s that found not only were people less likely to sue doctors who weren’t jerks, the actual outcome of treatment didn’t affect their decision to sue unless they felt like the doctor did not make them part of the decision process:
Research from Vanderbilt University Medical Center has found that doctors who are jerks could increase a hospital’s medical malpractice lawsuits.
The Center’s researchers reviewed surgeons’ complaints from over 30,000 patients from 2015 to 2017 who had surgery at seven health centers. After categorizing the surgeons who had the highest number of complaints, they examined whether patients had complications within a month after operations.
The report found that patients of the surgeons with the most complaints were 14% more likely to have a problem after their surgery.
The Center’s authors think that this could be because surgeons who are discourteous to their patients also treat their operating room team members similarly, which results in a patient’s poor treatment.
Notably a 14 percent disparity in complications after surgery nationally would result in an extra $3 billion in costs to patients, insurers and hospitals.
Surgeons who receive the most patient complaints also get most of the medical malpractice suits.
Staggeringly, three percent of doctors nationally account for 50 percent of patient complaints, and they also account for 50 to 60 percent of the malpractice risk. This means that patients are discerning that something in their interaction with their physician did not agree with them.
Vanderbilt Medical Center works close to 150 hospitals nationwide, focusing on those who have a high number of patient complaints and medical malpractice cases. Performing peer interventions lowers the number of malpractice complaints. This also applies to other medical professionals – especially advanced practice nurses.
Hospital administrators are not surprised, as practicing medicine works better as a team. Receiving patient feedback is key: many hospitals survey patients to provide their ideas and thoughts regarding the care they received while hospitalized.
Another factor is doctors’ behavioral changes.
Attorney Gary Massey explained, “Getting feedback from patients shows the importance of their opinions. If a medical practitioner is not providing proper care, the medical institution should be aware of this.”
I’ve noticed as an older woman male doctors are very curt and disrespectful. I’ve even been told not to come back! Orthopedic guy walked out – slammed the door and told his curse to tell me he didn’t need to see me again. Another old coot walked out without so much as a nice to meet you goodbye. He didn’t bother to introduce himself or shake my hand either. When i was young and hot that never happened.
I am pretty much done with male doctors unless I have no choice.
I’m so thankful for the doctor I have at Highland Hospital. I get first-rate care there, and they always listen to what I have to say. What’s more, they ask me questions about stuff I wouldn’t have thought of to say to them.
A good doctor can really make your life a lot better, but a bad doctor can straight up kill you.
My mother had a fusion surgery in two vertebrae in her neck by an infamous butcher of a neurosurgeon in Eureka, and it never set properly because he used a cadaver bone plug. My sister went ballistic when she found out, and had mom flown to Stanford, where they examined her and recommended a surgeon at Presbyterian Hospital in San Francisco. He rebroke her neck and re-set it with a bone plug he took from her hip. The next time I saw my mother (about two months later) she was riding off down the beach on a Honda Four Trax. After that incident, I remembered hearing my boss at a warehouse tell me a story about the same neurosurgeon in Eureka, who had apparently actually killed his wife.
And to put a nice, awful, punctuation mark on the whole affair, the headaches they were trying to cure my mother of with the surgery turned out to be caused by a brain tumor, that they didn’t find until it was too late to do anything about.
In general, doctors don’t listen to women.
Amen Susie. Lawyers too.