Did you have open heart surgery and now are on dialysis?
Do you smoke and use birth control and now have a blood clot?
Did you take X drug and now are experiencing
Well, we may have some $$$ for you!! Call our law offices now now now and we will use your pain and suffering and take $$ from the hospital and give it to you. Of course, after we take our 90% cut, you may not have much left. And theres our legal fees of course.....
Everytime I see these commercials my teeth grit a little. OK alot. I cant stand the fact that our sue happy culture has driven up the price of health care and indirectly driven down my paycheck by these frivilous lawsuits. Vultures!!:argue:
Malpractice attorneys are usually *not* scumbags. They invest heavily in those ads to take, in a good year, between 5-6 cases.
Most of the people who threaten to sue you have no idea what the heck they are talking about.
The drug ads are usually done by class action firms. They are more public interest oriented and tend to donate large portions of unclaimed awards to charity. A law firm here donated 200k to the Red Cross one year.
The "free consultation" is usually done by a NURSE. Yep. A NURSE. He or she may screen 5-6 thousand cases a year and refer several hundred to the attorney who will then pick 5-6 out of that again, in a good year.
Lawyers generally like to avoid OB suits. They involve lots of neuro junk that's hard to prove and requires lots of experts.
They really prefer simple stuff like giving the wrong blood product, amputating the wrong limb, failure to report an abnormal pap to a patient. They really prefer to sue when someone is already gone.
Lawyers usually keep war chests. A million dollars worth of credit or so to cover the costs of the suit before they see their fee. These suits can take 5-8 years to litigate and the interest on the fees can drive them into personal bankruptcy.
They really do care about those cases. It keeps them tossing and turning at night.
Lawyers are not permitted to take more than 40% of the award. A third is considered standard practice.
90% of medical malpractice suits fail at summary judgment.
Successful lawsuits are usually brought against a facility or a particular doctor who is "known" in the legal circle. Only 5-6% of doctors are ever successfully sued. 85% of those are sued more than once. (Lawyers wonder why doctors don't do a better job of "self-policing")
Malpractice insurance rates do not go down in states where awards are capped. (Lawyers wonder why doctors can't see the sob story the insurance company is selling them about lawsuits. Example: in one county in California, one set of doctors got sued 6 times in 3 years. None of the other OBs were sued at all. Rates for all OBs went up "due to a increased risk in that area." )
LAWYERS can be sued for malpractice. Legal malpractice is the FASTEST growing malpractice area with suits tripling in the past few years. Insurance rates are going up for lawyers.
Its food for thought.
Today was my first day in nursing school and I am so so glad I am not involved in anymore lawsuits.
How about the ads on the subway for lawyers that list how much money they've won for various birth defects in children. It basically insinuates that if your child has a disability, they can blame and sue the person who delivered him or her, for possibly millions!!! Ugh.
Thank you, John Edwards :argue:
Seriously. Several of my friends have CP and we have those commercials that are like "if your child has CP after a long delivery or emergency c section, call 1800dewycheatemandhowe. Millions of dollars in settlements have been awarded recently..."
like the crash section wasn't done soon enough...or they "let" the mother progress too long...jeez.
Malpractice attorneys are usually *not* scumbags. They invest heavily in those ads to take, in a good year, between 5-6 cases.
Most of the people who threaten to sue you have no idea what the heck they are talking about.
The drug ads are usually done by class action firms. They are more public interest oriented and tend to donate large portions of unclaimed awards to charity. A law firm here donated 200k to the Red Cross one year.
The "free consultation" is usually done by a NURSE. Yep. A NURSE. He or she may screen 5-6 thousand cases a year and refer several hundred to the attorney who will then pick 5-6 out of that again, in a good year.
Lawyers generally like to avoid OB suits. They involve lots of neuro junk that's hard to prove and requires lots of experts.
They really prefer simple stuff like giving the wrong blood product, amputating the wrong limb, failure to report an abnormal pap to a patient. They really prefer to sue when someone is already gone.
Lawyers usually keep war chests. A million dollars worth of credit or so to cover the costs of the suit before they see their fee. These suits can take 5-8 years to litigate and the interest on the fees can drive them into personal bankruptcy.
They really do care about those cases. It keeps them tossing and turning at night.
Lawyers are not permitted to take more than 40% of the award. A third is considered standard practice.
90% of medical malpractice suits fail at summary judgment.
Successful lawsuits are usually brought against a facility or a particular doctor who is "known" in the legal circle. Only 5-6% of doctors are ever successfully sued. 85% of those are sued more than once. (Lawyers wonder why doctors don't do a better job of "self-policing")
Malpractice insurance rates do not go down in states where awards are capped. (Lawyers wonder why doctors can't see the sob story the insurance company is selling them about lawsuits. Example: in one county in California, one set of doctors got sued 6 times in 3 years. None of the other OBs were sued at all. Rates for all OBs went up "due to a increased risk in that area." )
LAWYERS can be sued for malpractice. Legal malpractice is the FASTEST growing malpractice area with suits tripling in the past few years. Insurance rates are going up for lawyers.
Its food for thought.
Today was my first day in nursing school and I am so so glad I am not involved in anymore lawsuits.
Good points. But I think these ads are still very harmful. They make the layperson, who knows very little about medical care, feel that they have been wronged in many cases where no wrongdoing actually transpired on the part of medical professionals. Patients see these ads and it perpetrates the idea that there should never be side effects and things should not ever go wrong with medical treatment and if things do go wrong, its the fault of the doctor, nurse, or medical facility. And despite your arguments, I am still convinced that these lawsuits negatively affect the rising costs associated with health care, if for no other reason than practitioners fear lawsuits so much now, they have to practice defensive medicine which results in much higher costs. Believe me, when you get out of nursing school and have to look after your license you may not feel so great seeing these ads on television, or the culture they are perpetrating in modern day health care.
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
Good points. But I think these ads are still very harmful. They make the layperson, who knows very little about medical care, feel that they have been wronged in many cases where no wrongdoing actually transpired on the part of medical professionals. Patients see these ads and it perpetrates the idea that there should never be side effects and things should not ever go wrong with medical treatment and if things do go wrong, its the fault of the doctor, nurse, or medical facility. And despite your arguments, I am still convinced that these lawsuits negatively affect the rising costs associated with health care, if for no other reason than practitioners fear lawsuits so much now, they have to practice defensive medicine which results in much higher costs. Believe me, when you get out of nursing school and have to look after your license you may not feel so great seeing these ads on television, or the culture they are perpetrating in modern day health care.
I believe that both of you have excellent points-it is not easy to sue but, at the same time, to be part of a system that seems destined to work against the dedicated workers that are trying to work hard to meet the challenges of patient care in such aggressive settings is overwhelming. Too much emphasis is placed on customer relations rather than reality. And if we take it ALL on, we can lose ourselves easily.
Specializes in LTC/SNF, Psychiatric, Pharmaceutical.
Devil's advocate:
Malpractice attorneys are usually *not* scumbags. They invest heavily in those ads to take, in a good year, between 5-6 cases.
Most of the people who threaten to sue you have no idea what the heck they are talking about.
The drug ads are usually done by class action firms. They are more public interest oriented and tend to donate large portions of unclaimed awards to charity. A law firm here donated 200k to the Red Cross one year.
The "free consultation" is usually done by a NURSE. Yep. A NURSE. He or she may screen 5-6 thousand cases a year and refer several hundred to the attorney who will then pick 5-6 out of that again, in a good year.
Lawyers generally like to avoid OB suits. They involve lots of neuro junk that's hard to prove and requires lots of experts.
They really prefer simple stuff like giving the wrong blood product, amputating the wrong limb, failure to report an abnormal pap to a patient. They really prefer to sue when someone is already gone.
Lawyers usually keep war chests. A million dollars worth of credit or so to cover the costs of the suit before they see their fee. These suits can take 5-8 years to litigate and the interest on the fees can drive them into personal bankruptcy.
They really do care about those cases. It keeps them tossing and turning at night.
Lawyers are not permitted to take more than 40% of the award. A third is considered standard practice.
90% of medical malpractice suits fail at summary judgment.
Successful lawsuits are usually brought against a facility or a particular doctor who is "known" in the legal circle. Only 5-6% of doctors are ever successfully sued. 85% of those are sued more than once. (Lawyers wonder why doctors don't do a better job of "self-policing")
Malpractice insurance rates do not go down in states where awards are capped. (Lawyers wonder why doctors can't see the sob story the insurance company is selling them about lawsuits. Example: in one county in California, one set of doctors got sued 6 times in 3 years. None of the other OBs were sued at all. Rates for all OBs went up "due to a increased risk in that area." )
LAWYERS can be sued for malpractice. Legal malpractice is the FASTEST growing malpractice area with suits tripling in the past few years. Insurance rates are going up for lawyers.
Its food for thought.
Today was my first day in nursing school and I am so so glad I am not involved in anymore lawsuits.
But - the point the OP and the rest of us were trying to make is that all these sensational ads promising big cash settlements from drug companies and nursing homes are reprehensible and blatantly manipulate people's emotions. Advertisements for law firms generally look and sound like ads from used car salesman, with big, blaring type, and loud, emotionally-charged words and phrases. Lawyers have their woes, just like other professions, but that's no excuse for sensationalism and manipulation.
"if you've taken a blood thinner and ended up on dialysis or had a stroke"
Hello, most folks on dialysis or who've had a stroke are ON these drugs and for a good reason. I had a dialysis pt who saw one such commercial, stopped taking her blood thinner and ended up with her port clotting off.
The American public wants zero culpability for their actions. Any actions. Anytime. They want "someone" to fix their years of inactivity, poor diet, poor exercise, poor lifestyle choices. They want "someone" to take care of whatever problems they've either caused themselves, OR "someone" to fix whatever life just happened to dump on them. And it's always "someone's" fault when it can't be fixed, or not fixed as well as they'd like. Meaning perfectly. And if they themselves don't make the best choice when it comes to healthcare options they are presented? That's ok, "someone else" will take the blame. After all, THEY can't be responsible for ANY of it.
"Someone will pay", don't worry...just ask the TV Lawyers.
It seems like people don't believe in personal responsibility anymore. What this country needs is a lawyer shortage instead of a nursing shortage.
VICEDRN, BSN, RN
1,078 Posts
Devil's advocate:
Malpractice attorneys are usually *not* scumbags. They invest heavily in those ads to take, in a good year, between 5-6 cases.
Most of the people who threaten to sue you have no idea what the heck they are talking about.
The drug ads are usually done by class action firms. They are more public interest oriented and tend to donate large portions of unclaimed awards to charity. A law firm here donated 200k to the Red Cross one year.
The "free consultation" is usually done by a NURSE. Yep. A NURSE. He or she may screen 5-6 thousand cases a year and refer several hundred to the attorney who will then pick 5-6 out of that again, in a good year.
Lawyers generally like to avoid OB suits. They involve lots of neuro junk that's hard to prove and requires lots of experts.
They really prefer simple stuff like giving the wrong blood product, amputating the wrong limb, failure to report an abnormal pap to a patient. They really prefer to sue when someone is already gone.
Lawyers usually keep war chests. A million dollars worth of credit or so to cover the costs of the suit before they see their fee. These suits can take 5-8 years to litigate and the interest on the fees can drive them into personal bankruptcy.
They really do care about those cases. It keeps them tossing and turning at night.
Lawyers are not permitted to take more than 40% of the award. A third is considered standard practice.
90% of medical malpractice suits fail at summary judgment.
Successful lawsuits are usually brought against a facility or a particular doctor who is "known" in the legal circle. Only 5-6% of doctors are ever successfully sued. 85% of those are sued more than once. (Lawyers wonder why doctors don't do a better job of "self-policing")
Malpractice insurance rates do not go down in states where awards are capped. (Lawyers wonder why doctors can't see the sob story the insurance company is selling them about lawsuits. Example: in one county in California, one set of doctors got sued 6 times in 3 years. None of the other OBs were sued at all. Rates for all OBs went up "due to a increased risk in that area." )
LAWYERS can be sued for malpractice. Legal malpractice is the FASTEST growing malpractice area with suits tripling in the past few years. Insurance rates are going up for lawyers.
Its food for thought.
Today was my first day in nursing school and I am so so glad I am not involved in anymore lawsuits.