Girlfriend's Medical Snafu Was Scarey,

[Chills1994]

Howdie fellow BE'ers,

As some of you might have read in my other post, the girlfriend, Jill, was looking at new cars because she got in an accident last Monday, the 4th.

Well, have I got a story for you all. I'll try to make it as short as possible.

When the EMT's arrived at the scene, they stuck one of those collars on her. They were trying to convince her to go to the hospital. She said that she didn't want to wear the collar because it was rubbing/pressing on her chest where the seatbelt got her. They said they couldn't take her without it because it was hospital policy to have the collar on while being taken to the ER. So she promised them that she would see a doctor the next day.

On Tuesday, she sees a doctor at the local clinic/office. X-rays were taken right next door. The films were transferred, I guess, to the affiliated hospital where a radiologist could look at them and type up a report.

On Thursday evening, Jill gets a call from the clinic telling her that she has a golf ball sized white spot on one of her lungs. They said it could be cancer. Well, she is a little freaked out by that bit of news. They tell her to see her regular lung doctor ASAP.

On Friday, she gets in to see her pulmonologist. She has a preexisting lung condition called sarcoidosis. He sees the films and reads the radiologist report. In it, there was something along the lines of a dissected aorta mentioned. Everybody is stressing out because that is just milimeters away from having her aorta literally detach from her heart. So they transport her next door to the hospital. Behind the scenes everything is getting lined up to perform emergency surgery on her. They tell her to call her family and her work. Well, they're freaking out too. Her older brother lives in New York and is trying to book a flight to St. Louis, post haste.

The pulmonolgist decides to run a few more tests, X-rays, or CAT scans. He gets the results back. Her lungs and heart look clear! The original results some how got switched from some other unlucky soul who actually does have advanced lung cancer.

Her father is pi$$ed, as you all can imagine. He goes up to the hospital today and actually gets to talk to someone higher up the administrative food chain. They tell him for her to get a lawyer and come up with some "price" and they'll pay it.

So, my question to all of you nice folks on BE forums is what would think is a "fair price" to ask for?

For all you legal types out there (or if you've been there, done that), on what legal grounds could she ask for such and such amount if this were to go to court?

Thanks,

Chills

P.S. She is doing better. Neck is sore, but better. I forgot to mention that Friday was her birthday. What a day!

[Jake Di Vita]

At risk of bad humor, I'd say about 250,000 rounds should cover it.

Glad she is alright though...had people I care about go through things like that myself and it is no fun what-so-ever.

[warpspeed]

I'm not so sure how to put a price on being completly freaked out but here is how i'd do it

I'd figure that 2 - 3 weeks vaction somewhere far far away like Tahiti or Fiji fully paid for by them plus any lost wages as a result of the recent hospitalization and the 2- 3 weeks of vacation time to get rid of all the stress they created.

Then, if 2 - 3 weeks doesn't do it, repeat as necessary until all stress is gone.I'd figure at least 6 weeks all togeather.

I'd guess 75 - 100 K would do it.

[ChuckS]

How about the facility covers any costs that she incurred, gives a letter of apology, indicates what disciplinary action was taken on the employee who swapped the x-ray, and what policy changes they will do to prevent it from happening again. That way we can all get back to complaining about how much medical care costs...

[davidwiz]

Negligent infliction of emotional distress would be the grounds. While it is good that your gf is fine, I find it distasteful to want money. However, there are plenty of bottom-feeding attorneys out there who would take the case on contingency. Expect to pay them at least 1/3 of the recovery + expenses.

A better way to handle it would be like ChuckS suggested.

Edited July 12, 2005 by davidwiz

[Chills1994]

Howdie Again!

The whole money grubbing thing doesn't sit well with me, too.

I'm not out for a "lawsuit lottery". And I don't think she is either.

I'd also imagine that folks into guns, like we all are here, are more inclined to be of a conservative "right wing" nature. We all hear about media reports about this that and the other thing. When we get together at various meetings of whatever, and especially at the ranges for matches and practice, we all tend to chit chat about various political, religious, social, and economic problems.

If my memory serves me correctly, those kind of conversations stem from being of similar "mind" with one another. In part, it is that which makes going to the range or out to matches so much fun. There is kind of a "security blanket effect" when you go out and shoot. You see someone out at the range and you can almost be certain that you and the fellow shooter are going to have some viewpoints in common. You do not necessarily have to be "on guard" about what your opinions are. Furthermore, you don't have to feel anxious about what the other guy might say. Granted, you should still be polite and obviously keep some opinions to yourself.

So that is why I presented such a question to you, fellow BE'ers.

By the way, the hospital was the first one to bring up money and price.

Thanks, for your input

Chills

[al503]

I agree with ChuckS also. Include everyone's out of pocket expenses though. If anyone was truly affected mentally or physically, then monetary compensation may be in order.

[Skywalker]

What about the following: tell the hospital that your gf is fine, she needs no money, but she'd like them to (financially) take care of the pour sould with advanced lung cancer whose films got mixed with your gf's ones.

At least something good could come out of this story.

[Liota]

What Luca said and the hospital should pay for your girlfriend's expenses, too.

Liota

[TBeazlie]

I'll say right up front that I am a physician so I may have my own bias here, but every day I see lots of bad stuff happen to very nice people. You and your GF should just be very, very , very happy that those Xrays were not hers and leave it at that.

[Hey QuicksDraw!]

Money Shamoney! I'm just glad your girlfriend is O.K. That is priceless!!

[BritinUSA]

What about the following: tell the hospital that your gf is fine, she needs no money, but she'd like them to (financially) take care of the pour sould with advanced lung cancer whose films got mixed with your gf's ones.

At least something good could come out of this story.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think this is a great idea, you could probably do it without the lawyers as well. Just get in contact with the top people at the hospital, kind of an out-of-court settlement. No money changes hands, the hospital just gives some free health care to the poor soul with the lung cancer...

You walk away with head held high, and warm fuzzy feeling that you helped someone and the hospital saves a bundle on attorney fees etc.

[tightloop]

Glad your GF is ok...ask them to pay for all missed wages, car repairs of new car, or whatever is applicable and how about donating say 100k in her name to her favorite charity, like cancer research or even the NRA....that might help them remember the incident..

[carinab]

Get it in writing (I would not put it above the admins to agree to your deal and then still charge the poor bastard) and ask them to send you an itemized bill for the treatment costs they absorb for that person with the lung cancer. They will balk at you about the person's privacy as well...the only suggestion I have for that is to have them create a credit on an account for you and then they can transfer the charges onto that account.

[Merlin Orr]

Money Shamoney! I'm just glad your girlfriend is O.K. That is priceless!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

X2!

[rubberneck]

What I am about to say may be unpopular here and if it is so be it. Your girlfriend should not ask for anything more than to have her costs covered and a letter of apology. That's it.

Don't get me wrong, what happened to her sucks big time but at the end of the day she still has her health.

Some of you have made snide comments about Doctors and Hospital and those comments are 100% out of line. I come from a large family with 6 of them being doctor's with one more on the way. They wake up every morning hoping to make the lives of their patients better. They don't wake up and check their stock portfolio's. They work long hours and put up with tons of $hit that John Q public never sees, and yes they do make mistakes from time to time. As we all do no matter how hard we try and so do the people that work for them and the hospitals. I doubt very much that any of them go to work every day wondering how they can ruin someones life. Bad things happen to very good people every day. It's just a fact of life.

My father's GP misdiagnosed his prostate cancer. What should have been easy treat ended up as type 3 cancer and the advice to go home and get your affiars in order. He opted to undergo a radical treatment that took care of the cancer (10 years later he is still going strong) but left him chemically castrated. He decided not to sue his GP for two reasons. The first being that it would never undo what he has gone through. You can't put a price on that. And secondly and more importantly health care isn't a zero sum game. Every dollar that your doctor has to spend on malpractice insurance has to come from somewhere. There people out there that can't afford insurance and can't even afford to pay the $75 for an office visit. Their quality of life stinks becuase lawsuits and and settlements make health care entirely unaffordable to them.

I leave you with this. Recently a cousin of mine closed her OB/GYN practice here in NJ. Every year she would sit down and figure out what it cost her to open her doors every year. When you added up the costs she would have to make $600,000 a year just to break even. $250,000 right off the bat went towards malpractice insurance and the rest towards office space, salary, equipment, etc.... Her last full year with the practice she made roughly $78,000 when it was all said and done. Sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but when you calaculate how much time she spent in the office and at the hospital nights and weekends it worked out to something stupid like $27 dollars an hour and no personal life.

Any way I am glad to here you girlfriend is doing fine. I hope that out of this whole fiasco she can appreciate who fragile life is. Having survived a couple close calls myself I know I do.

[scorch]

So SHE HERE SELF made 78,000 or the Clinic made 78,000..... is that profit or Gross.

I like the Letter stuff and what are you going to do about it in the Future to make sure this does not happen again. Money: Out of Pocket expenses for all and a little extra to take a small vaction to relax after all this MAJOR stress.

[rubberneck]

So SHE HERE SELF made 78,000 or the Clinic made 78,000..... is that profit or Gross.

She was the only Doctor in the practice and the $78,000 was what she reported on her return.

[Rob Boudrie]

Consider yourself very fortunate the the hospital fessed up to the mistake, and did not cover it up after an unneeded operation. I'm not thinking of an active coverup of lying to the patient, but a passive one of selective information - "We have good news - what we saw on the Xray was not a cancer after all" rather than "Once we got inside it was clear we had thw rong X-Ray".

Some trivia I was surprised to learn about standard mecial practice (at least in MA).

1. If you are given the wrong medication by error in the hospital, there will be no note of it in your medical record for the stay, or on your chart. That's right - they don't write "accidently given xyz" - it's just omitted. If it's noticed, an MD is notified and necessary corrective action for patient welfare is taken, but they keep the error off the patient visible record. There is no procedure to make sure the patient is told of the error.

2. If an "incident report" is filed on a nursing error (wrong medication, etc.) that document is protected - neither the patient or patient's attorney has access to it.

The next time you are in the hospital ask "what is your procedure for notifying me if you make a medication error, and what written record will I be given of any such mistake."

[Gun Geek]

What I am about to say may be unpopular here and if it is so be it. Your girlfriend should not ask for anything more than to have her costs covered and a letter of apology. That's it.

Don't get me wrong, what happened to her sucks big time but at the end of the day she still has her health.

Some of you have made snide comments about Doctors and Hospital and those comments are 100% out of line. I come from a large family with 6 of them being doctor's with one more on the way. They wake up every morning hoping to make the lives of their patients better. They don't wake up and check their stock portfolio's. They work long hours and put up with tons of $hit that John Q public never sees, and yes they do make mistakes from time to time. As we all do no matter how hard we try and so do the people that work for them and the hospitals. I doubt very much that any of them go to work every day wondering how they can ruin someones life. Bad things happen to very good people every day. It's just a fact of life.

My father's GP misdiagnosed his prostate cancer. What should have been easy treat ended up as type 3 cancer and the advice to go home and get your affiars in order. He opted to undergo a radical treatment that took care of the cancer (10 years later he is still going strong) but left him chemically castrated. He decided not to sue his GP for two reasons. The first being that it would never undo what he has gone through. You can't put a price on that. And secondly and more importantly health care isn't a zero sum game. Every dollar that your doctor has to spend on malpractice insurance has to come from somewhere. There people out there that can't afford insurance and can't even afford to pay the $75 for an office visit. Their quality of life stinks becuase lawsuits and and settlements make health care entirely unaffordable to them.

I leave you with this. Recently a cousin of mine closed her OB/GYN practice here in NJ. Every year she would sit down and figure out what it cost her to open her doors every year. When you added up the costs she would have to make $600,000 a year just to break even. $250,000 right off the bat went towards malpractice insurance and the rest towards office space, salary, equipment, etc.... Her last full year with the practice she made roughly $78,000 when it was all said and done. Sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but when you calaculate how much time she spent in the office and at the hospital nights and weekends it worked out to something stupid like $27 dollars an hour and no personal life.

Any way I am glad to here you girlfriend is doing fine. I hope that out of this whole fiasco she can appreciate who fragile life is. Having survived a couple close calls myself I know I do.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

X2 X2 X2

neck this is not unpopular with me!

Cover your out-of-pocket, your lost wages (even $$ spent by family members), etc. and forget the rest.

You're in danger of falling into the "lawsuit lottery" trap (mentioned b4) and helping to drive up the cost of med care all around. Hospitals & Drs should pay reasonably for the consequences of true negligent mistakes - not be punished because of some short term stress and a mistake they caught.

Unless I missed something in the post, where does the desire to get medical expenses covered for the other guy come form? If the other person was in that bad of shape, there were likely symptoms and when the x-rays came back neg (while probably lots of other tests were positive), I'll bet the hospital re-ran things and figured it out.

Sorry - I know, sounds a little "Libertarian". I don't mean to be, but as I get older...

2 more cents

[Putty]

I was recently mis-diagnosed by two doctors...one was pumping me full of shi** I did not need and the other was trying to do invasive surgery. Luckily my Dad is a Radiologist (and a Prik) who couldnt believe the scenario when disclosed. I didn't sue, I just moved on and got a better doctor. I am not due or owed anything and blame is what it is.

And yeah, get it in writing if your going that route.

[SiG Lady]

I was mis-diagnosed in an urgent care clinic in year 2000 (I actually required emergency intestinal surgery--and looked like hell--but they didn't even x-ray me to check it all out). Two agonizing days later I had the surgery, but a month later the clinic bill came and I politely explained that I'd been mis-diagnosed and explained the whole scenario. They wrote back, apologized, and cancelled the bill. I thanked them and considered myself treated fairly for that little favor. I would've died (or at least gone into a coma) if I'd not had proper treatment within about two more days anyway, so yes, it was serious and I had proof that it was so if they'd have asked for it.

And get this: The ambulance service (all of a block away) that finally took me to the hospital two days later bitched and griped at me ALL THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL that I was wasting their time, taking up space on their ambulance that somone else might've needed, etc., etc. My god!! This was abuse!! Now, I wasn't so polite to the ambulance people when THEIR bill came in. That bunch got a piece of my mind that was as big as Mt. Rushmore and I hope their feelings got hurt to the core. There was no flippin' excuse for that treatment.

On the other hand, that's one of the ONLY negative experiences with doctors that I've had--ever. I've known many, many good doctors who really treated me right and were even nice people to know... not to mention competent.

[Rob Boudrie]

They wrote back, apologized, and cancelled the bill.  I thanked them and considered myself treated fairly for that little favor.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, it was you who did the favor for them offering such a reasonable settlement.

[stevepitt]

Earlier advice:

What about the following: tell the hospital that your gf is fine, she needs no money, but she'd like them to (financially) take care of the pour sould with advanced lung cancer whose films got mixed with your gf's ones.

At least something good could come out of this story.

**********************************

Awesome! And it's the one lesson I KNOW my kids actually took from me:

One time they asked how they could pay me back for something I did for them...

I told them to just help someone else when they could....

Best lesson in life!

Pay It Forward!

Steve Pitt

[SiG Lady]

"Actually, it was you who did the favor for them offering such a reasonable settlement."

They responded very quickly in this matter and I thought it was OK in the end. I was so near death by the time I got to the hospital (and so worn out when I got home) that I didn't much give a fig by that time. I recovered quickly enough to take care of those crass 'n rude ambulance folks, though, with a very nasty letter, you betcha. Man, I was SOOO appalled at them I could hardly contain myself.