ICU stay before death common in the U.S.

I do not generally agree with tort reform which limits the compensation awarded to persons injured by the healthcare they receive. If the surgeon removes your right leg instead of your left leg...what will that cost you over the remainder of your lifetime in prosthetics, or wheelchairs, or pain meds, automobile adaptations, home renovations, etc. There are serious injuries caused by the incompetence and malpractice of doctors and nurses which deserve to be adequately compensated. The answer is not to futher victimize the victims.

I agree with you. Those who are hurt by malpractice or neglect should be adequately compensated. However, some sort of tort reform seems necessary to decrease frivolous lawsuits. It would be nice if health care workers could do their jobs without constantly worrying about getting sued by an irate "customer". It would also be nice if there was no need to practice the extremes of defensive medicine and let common sense prevail.

Honestly, I believe tort reform needs to limit the attorneys' share of compensation. Yes, attorneys work hard for their clients but why should they be entitled to millions of dollars because of malpractice suits when they aren't the ones who are injured?

I don't believe that victims should be short-changed. But the attorneys----maybe it's time they stop feeding at the golden trough.

I do not generally agree with tort reform which limits the compensation awarded to persons injured by the healthcare they receive. If the surgeon removes your right leg instead of your left leg...what will that cost you over the remainder of your lifetime in prosthetics, or wheelchairs, or pain meds, automobile adaptations, home renovations, etc. There are serious injuries caused by the incompetence and malpractice of doctors and nurses which deserve to be adequately compensated. The answer is not to futher victimize the victims.

Hospitals and physicians today (in the US) could refuse to admit people to ICUs and refuse to code people (and refuse to do lots of other things) -- they just don't.

Yes, but at same token, why do we not have a "loser pays all' policy, to weed out the frivolous lawsuits? This would not prevent people from suing over the obvious serious issues, but might prevent people from suing over the trivial things.

The other issue, is while a surgeon that removes the wrong limb, should pay, they also need to have some action taken to prevent this type of error from occurring again. And too often, that does not happen.

In the Florida case of an MD amputating the wrong limb, the MD retained his license to practice despite the PR, and did not lose his license until several other incidents of serious malpractice occurred. And in a notorious NYC case, a brain surgeon who operated on the wrong side of a Pt's brain, retained his license and several years later repeated the exact same error.

So why the heck was this PERMITTED to happen. I know that in virtually every hospital in which I have worked, there are certain MDs that other MDs will not refer their pts to, because they feel that the care is lacking, if not dangerous. Yet none of them will ever speak against them,if it comes to a Board hearing, etc. So to a certain extent, they share partial fault for those increased malpractice insurance, for not speaking up when their colleagues screw up.

Being loyal to one's profession is one thing, but there should be no rational excuse for the above wrong site surgeries to have reoccurred.