File cabinets. PAG office on Rockside Rd. Shark Billboard on
1-480. Plain Dealer newspaper ad highlighting "Physicians, Have
You Been Injured?
File cabinets:
There are now two sets of file cabinets in the PAG office,
one for Insurance Companies, the other for Trial Lawyers.
These cabinets will be used to store specific complaints from physicians.
PAG will begin by interviewing the Chiefs of Staff of the 16 PAG hospitals
and their office staffs. Interviews will seek to document any physician
abuse that occurs from the medical liability tort system, especially
by trial lawyers and expert witnesses. Insurance company behavior that
unfairly or illegally prevents physicians from being appropriately reimbursed
will be catalogued and remedies will be pursued.
A new PAG office on Rockside Rd:
PAG has leased office space from Duke Realty in the Freedom
Square complex on Rockside Rd. The lease began December 15,
2004 and the office opened to receive Physician complaints about Trial
Lawyers and Insurance Companies on January 3, 2005. It is staffed full
time, 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday. It will also be used as a
meeting place to create alliances between Physicians, the public, public
groups, employers, and legislators. The office address is:
4401 Rockside Rd.
Freedom Square, Bldg # 1 Suite 106
Independence, Ohio 44131
Phone: 216-524-2222
FAX: 216-524-2257
The Shark Billboard on 1-480:
This billboard
was created by PAG using the expertise of Rosenberg Advertising in Lakewood,
Ohio. The board is located on 1-480
westbound, on your right just before reaching the 1-77 interchange. It
will be up from mid-January through end-February. The message is clear.
The Doctor/Patient Relationship Is Under Attack. Trial Lawyers and Insurance
Companies are benefiting greatly from the Doctor/Patient relationship.
Doctors and patients are losing more and more control. Fear of lawsuits
(Trial Lawyers) is controlling the relationship by causing doctors to
disregard any concern for the costs of healthcare. Failure to order a
test in a patient may lead to a three year journey through the courtroom.
It's easy for attorneys to find a physician expert (at $300 to $400 per
hour) to testify that the test should have been done. Fear of lawsuits
has also changed physician attitudes toward accepting patients with complicated
medical problems. Trial attorneys hurt doctors which hurts patients.
They must be eliminated from the process of rendering fair compensation
to medically injured patients.
Insurance companies are controlling the relationship through economic
clout. Physicians are not being fairly compensated for long hours
of patient care, complicated and multiple procedures, excessive paperwork,
etc. Patients are controlled by their sheer financial dependence on
Insurance Companies - in hopes of avoiding financial stress or ruin
- and they face an upward battle of increasing deductibles for decreasing
health care services. PAG believes that the healthcare system needs
aggressive rudimentary changes which bring focus and strength back
to the Doctor and the Patient, not the tort system and the Insurance
Companies.
Plain
Dealer newspaper ad highlighting "Physicians, Have You Been
Injured?" (Running on Monday January 10, 2005 in Main News): Physicians
are intentionally injured by insurance companies when they create impediments
to reimbursement. This is done through downcoding, bundling, delaying
payments, conspicuously losing documentation including operative reports,
and other methods that prevent physicians from being appropriately
reimbursed. Trial lawyers injure physicians when they file frivolous
lawsuits, shotgun physicians into a lawsuit just because their names
appear on a medical chart, coerce physicians into settling for fear
of having to pay prejudgment interest, and scare physicians away from
filing an appeal by threatening to go after personal assets beyond
the coverage provided by their malpractice insurance. Expert witnesses
are paid handsomely and injure physicians when they criticize them
under oath for not following the highest standard of care, rather than
the reasonable standard which the law demands. Experts, in some cases,
provide inaccurate and false testimony that grossly disregards the
facts of a case. The Plain Dealer ad is a "call to action." It's
time for physicians to fight back, register their specific complaints
with PAG, and begin to pursue remedies that will prevent abusive and
illegal behavior.
