Avera Law Firm

The Avera Law Firm Blog is designed to update clients, vendors, and other interested persons regarding law firm news, personnel, legal issues, and legislative issues. The firm management welcomes posts and questions to the blog as an interactive means to provide information to the public.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Avera & Avera Welcomes New Firm Administrator

Avera & Avera is pleased to announce the hiring of Firm Administrator Richard Turnbow. Mr. Turnbow joins Avera & Avera from a prominent Montgomery, AL firm. Richard is a certified public accountant by trade and has almost 30 years of experience administrating law firms both large and small. He is a member of the Association of Legal Adminstrators and is a freqeunt speaker at seminars across the country on issues regarding law firm administration. As an integral member of the Avera & Avera team, Richard will work to make the firm more efficient in providing legal services to the clientele of Avera & Avera. If you wish to contact Richard, his email address is rturnbow@avera.com.

posted by Mark Avera at 4/18/2006 06:51:00 AM | 0 comments

Florida Republican Leadership Tries to Eliminate Accountability for Doctors and Hospitals Who Injure and Kill Patients

Florida statutes currently place strict and clear guidelines regarding the necessary qualifications a medical expert must have to testify in a medical malpractice case. But to understand how the system works in the real world, one must understand the culture. Only then can you fully appreciate what the Florida House of Representatives is pushing in House Bill 1561.

In Florida, before a patient may file a lawsuit in court against a medical provider, a medical expert, in the same or similar specialty as the offending medical provider, must provide an affidavit that there was a breach of the standard of care and that the breach resulted in damages to the patient. The medical provider, and its insurer if it has one, then has 90 days to investigate the claim. 99.9% of the time, these notice with affidavits submitted by the patient, results in a denial of the claim.

Many times, patients who come to our firm to evaluate a potential medical malpractice case, will tell us that their subsequent treating physician was shocked by what happened to them and recommended that they contact an attorney who specializes in malpractice litigation to evaluate their claim. Often, the physician will make a statement to the patient making it clear that he or she believes that the previous medical provider committed malpractice.

But the reality is that these doctors who try to fix the malpractice but the patient’s medical provider will not agree to testify under oath that the medical provider committed malpractice. Physicians within the state refer cases to one another, they see each other in the hospital or other professional settings, they go to conferences with each other and, perhaps worse, they get labeled by other physicians as a “plaintiff’s expert” who will testify against medical providers. One can only imagine how that would affect the medical practice of a physician who would agree to testify on behalf of a patient. Some call this the “Code of Silence” within the profession.

So the reality is that a vast majority of the time, patients and the attorneys who represent them must go outside of the State of Florida to find medical experts who will agree to review a case if, if there is merit, testify on behalf of the patient.

So what is it that the Florida House of Representatives is trying to accomplish that would place this system in peril?

House Bill 1561 (HB1561) would require every physician who practices outside of Florida to be licensed. It doesn’t sound like a particularly bad idea until you are aware that the bill would permit the Board to discipline physicians for misleading, fraudulent or deceptive testimony. Now the rub. There are no opinions by a medical board, anywhere, where a medical expert testifying on behalf of a medical provider (doctor, hospital, nurse, etc) has been disciplined for providing deceptive testimony. There are opinions from medical boards sanctioning or disciplining medical experts who testify on behalf of a patient. Do you think that there are no defense experts who provide deceptive testimony?

The fact of the manner is that disciplining boards, made up of physicians, will never sanction one of the own who comes to the aid of one of their colleagues and provides false, deceptive or misleading testimony. They will do so for one who has the gall to testify on behalf of a patient.

I have taken depositions in malpractice cases of the most egregious nature and have witnessed defense experts say the most outrageous things to justify their position that the offending physician did nothing wrong.

All of this is aimed to the simple premise of trying to prevent people from filing malpractice lawsuits. Since the legislature capped the damages you can collect against a doctor or hospital for injuring or killing you or a loved one, our firm has further refined the types of malpractice cases we will accept. By imposing more draconian measures, the Republican leadership of the Florida Legislature are trying their level best to give the worst doctors and medical providers exacty what they want; protection from being accountable for the horrible injuries and deaths that they cause to the patients.

Make your voice head if you live in Florida. If you want to make sure that you have access to the court house if a negligent medical provider injures you or a family member, call your house representative and your Senator and urge them to vote against HB1561 and its companion bills.

For a complete version of HB1561, copy the link below and paste it into your web browser.

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Documents/loaddoc.aspx?FileName=_h1561__.doc&DocumentType=Bill&BillNumber=1561&Session=2006

posted by Mark Avera at 4/18/2006 05:36:00 AM | 0 comments