Our responsibility to Report Malpractice

[Guest guest]

Laurie,

You wrote, " ..a patient action page...explanation of why unhappy people

should use the complaint process may be helpful to getting a higher rate of

initiate of the process. will enhance the whole objective of the NDDB.. " ,

I would be gad to put together information that would make visitors tot he

site aware of their rights and responsibilities to take it a step further when

they have had an experience with a physician that was inappropriate,

neglectful, and/or unsafe. A link to JCAHO's website where they can report a

complaint

would make this easy for them to do.

My experience is that most people respond to the opportunity to list a doctor

when they have had a bad experience, so this would capture a large amount of

this population. When they are adding to the database they will also add the

doctors that have worked out well, but that tends to be secondary.

What is good about the NDDB is that it allows the reader to know what areas

the doctor scored low on. So, it may be that a particular area isn't important

to them, and they may choose to go see this MD, anyway, knowing their

downfalls. I was surprised that my doctor scored less than 90% when I think he

is

actually pretty good. When I reviewed my scoring, I realized that I did not

hesitate to score him low in areas that did not meet my expectation, but also

were

not important to me. So, I encourage people to not go by score alone, but pull

up the additional information available on the doctor.

However, in situations like Gio, when his doctor dropped him without

appropriate notice, violated a dozen regulations. If he was in the right, there

would

be no way that his doctor would have agreed to see him for one more month. The

doctor was lucky that Gio went to his PCP and not JCAHO.

Karyn E. , RN

Executive Director, PAI

http://www.pancassociation.org

Pancreatitis Association International