Word: patient
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ultimate price of inflated expectations and consumerist attitudes is the treacherous legal reality that confronts doctors today. Anything short of perfection becomes grounds for penalty. And once again, while it is the doctor who must pay the high insurance premiums and fend off the suits in court, the patient eventually pays a price. The annual number of malpractice suits filed has doubled in the past decade and ushered in the era of defensive medicine and risk managers. No single factor has done more to distance physicians from | patients than the possibility that a patient may one day put a doctor...
...impact of possible litigation is felt long before a patient sets foot in the doctor's office. Some physicians, like Linda Bolton, a pediatrician in Birmingham, Mich., try to screen out potential problems. "It really dictates what happens at the office. If I feel I have people who are litigious, I prefer not to take them as patients." In the past, she has fixed her rates only after she has been notified how much she will have to pay for malpractice insurance...
...doctors altogether. According to a 1987 survey by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1 out of 8 U.S. obstetricians has left the field because of the malpractice threat. Those who manage to stay in business may feel forced to practice a kind of medicine that assumes every patient is a prospective litigant. Such defensive tactics are antithetical to compassionate care: the doctor ends up being afraid of someone he or she wants to help, cautious about trying attractive new treatments and emotionally aloof from someone in need of emotional support...
Even as natural a procedure as giving birth has been greatly distorted by the epidemic of lawsuits. "Mothers believe that all babies should be born perfect," observes Massachusetts General's Stoeckle, and here the bond of doctor and patient may be most fragile. Doctors order expensive tests and uncomfortable procedures as protection against future suits. The costs to expectant parents are exorbitant, and discomfort during delivery is heightened: nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births are currently by caesarean section, which can be less risky to the baby than vaginal delivery and makes the doctor less vulnerable in court...
COVER: Under fire from all sides, the doctor-patient relationship is battered, bruised and in need of repair...