Decrease in Quality of Healthcare?

I have previously blogged about communication errors leading to medical mistakes. We all are concerned about the quality of our healthcare and whether there has been a decrease in the quality of care. Too little attention to a patient’s concerns leads to frustration and a problem with our system of medical care.  As a patient safety advocate, I realize how important good quality healthcare is and how fortunate we are in northeastern Ohio to have some of the finest institutions and finest doctors in the country. Unfortunately, there are times where the business of medicine prevents fine doctors from providing the kind of quality care that they want to provide or used to provide.

No matter what the reputation is of a hospital or a doctor, each patient is unique and special and deserves to be cared for as an individual. When that does not happen, the system fails and that special hospital or highly qualified doctor has failed to do his or her job. When a doctor fails to do his or her job, they can’t hide behind their reputation as an excuse. Their reputation is only as good as the next patient that places his or her trust in his or her hands to treat their medical condition and make them safe.

At Mishkind Kulwicki Law, our prospective clients are frequently heard to say:

1. Doctors don’t spend enough time with me;
2. Doctors don’t listen to me;
3. Doctors don’t run enough tests on me;
4. Doctors’ medical records have the wrong stuff about me;
5. Doctors don’t talk to one another about my care.

These and other common themes are heard daily by us and other medical negligence attorneys. Often, these shortcomings are due to a lack of empathy, sometimes due to the demands of seeing too many patients in a given day. When these stories result in preventable harm to a patient and a medical mistake takes place, patients expect and should be properly compensated.

At Mishkind Kulwicki Law, we frequently hear about horror stories in terms of patients being denied care or being given improper care or inadequate care.  Our job as patient safety advocates is to explain to victims of medical errors, to the best of our ability, why the quality of the care they expected to receive was not achieved. Our job is to next determine whether there is a remedy to right the wrong of a medical error. Sometimes there is and sometime there isn’t. Other times we can help explain to the patient why things went the way they did so they can have closure or can determine how to avoid the same thing happening again. We understand and we listen at Mishkind Kulwicki Law.