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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Record
Byline: Wendy Ruderman
Aug. 11--Victims of bad medical treatment may soon find it harder to figure out what happened to them.
Lawmakers in Trenton are planning to introduce legislation that would prevent victims from getting internal hospital documents that detail doctors' errors. Such documents can be critically important to victims, because they can help build a court case.
The legislation is part of a package of bills aimed at reducing the skyrocketing cost of medical malpractice insurance. But patient advocates and lawyers argue the bill will add another layer of secrecy to a culture that already borders on the clandestine.
Doctors rarely acknowledge their mistakes in patients' medical records. Instead, the errors are explored in great detail in hospital memos, meeting notes, and reports -- all of which are withheld from patients' medical records.
Patients can get the documents only if a judge orders the hospital to release them.
Under the New Jersey Patient Safety Act, proposed by Democratic Assemblymen Herbert C. Conaway Jr. and John McKeon, judges would no longer be able to make such an order. Patient advocates scoff at the bill's name. The bill, they argue, will make it harder for patients and consumers to learn about mistakes.
"Lawmakers are assisting a system that already makes it difficult for medical errors to be revealed," said Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy, a New York-based consumer group that works on behalf of patients. "Organized medicine is fighting to the death to keep this information covered up. The results are appalling. The patient is the last to know about a medical error, if they ever learn at all."
Doctors say the bill will enable them to talk openly about mistakes without fear of being sued, so they can learn from their errors and develop new hospital protocols that protect all patients. They say one of the best ways to safeguard patients from medical errors is for lawmakers to guarantee that hospital discussions about those errors will never be used against them by patients.
"Doctors are concerned and hospitals are concerned about developing a case and handing it to a plaintiff's attorney on a silver platter," Dr. Fred Jacobs, an executive vice president of Saint Barnabas Health Care System, told lawmakers at an Assembly hearing on the issue recently.
Doctors have a sympathetic ear in the Legislature, but victims of medical mistakes and their families have less sway over lawmakers.
Victims such as Philip Hunt.
Hunt became paralyzed while receiving treatment at Morristown Memorial Hospital after a motorcycle accident. An...
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