Originally Posted by SteveZ

The point about pro bono services is that for some it is mandatory, while others it is totally optional.

I've met a lot of physicians who blame everything on the lawyers and ingrate patients and see themselves as totally innocent in everything related to the health care cost issue. However, physicians did indeed set themselves up for the lion's share of the problem.

If you want to use the courtroom as the example of what's wrong, let's look at the participants. Everyone in the courtroom that matters - judge and jury members alike - in the last couple of generations has sat sick or hurt in a physician's office, waiting for what seemed like a dog's age before being seen, and then feeling like they were rushed through the event and treated as less-than-human, and oftentimes as an inconvenience and a whiner. The 1991 movie "The Doctor" starring William Hurt (ironically) had more truth than fiction in the eyes of potential jurists.

There's an old commercial litigator's saying that the best kind of person to sue is a physician or car dealer. Juries hate both, and almost everyone in the jury has had a bad experience with both. There is very little sympathy or empathy anymore for the physician by jury members, and most have considerable empathy with the person suing. Why is that? Physicians have access to considerable marketing support and exceptional psychological services to portray them as angels in white smocks. Everything would point to physicians being able to have their customers as adoring supporters, yet the reverse is usually the case.

Are there lawyers who can take advantage of this poor physician-customer relationship? Sure there are. And for those who handle medical malpractice cases, business is booming - and it's ALL based on the total lack of positive personal relationships between the physician and customer, as people don't sue those they have grown to love and respect and trust. Where there are good personal relationships, people work out any problem without dragging it into court, each armed with "hired guns."

So, when "tort reform" is thrown around as the cure-all to the health care situation, the underlying cause of medical malpractice cases - lousy physician-customer relationship - will still exist. And since medical malpractice cases are heard in state courts, "tort reform" is a state matter, not fed.

So, try to remember the time when there wasn't a plethora of medical malpractice suits and ask, "what has changed?" When that question is answered, then the situation can be corrected so that the lawsuits diminish. But that will take a reform of health care delivery which recognizes patients as humans first and accounts-receivable second to be successful. The physician can indeed "heal thyself."

Please note, I have great respect for the medical profession and those dedicated to it. I do hope that someday the medical profession will learn what other professions have discovered - treat the customer with dignity and respect, and invest the time to know the person as more than an account number, then you have a loyal customer AND friend who will give you every benefit of the doubt in every circumstance. There is a "cost" to adjusting your business to this level of customer relationship, but it's worth it in the end.

Growing up in inner-city Boston, I can still remember "Dr. Bill" who came to the house, had coffee at the table before continuing to the next house, and thought of as a decent guy who "watched your back." Welby did exist....