[khodadadi_babak89]

yeah, you really need to relax about this. 
put this into your mind: You are a physician in a litigious society. You will see 10s of thousands of patients. You cannot possibly please everyone, and there are easily a few hundred in that group who are certifiably crazy. You will be sued. It happens, to pretty much everyone.

Now – since almost everyone has been sued, if being reported to the NPDB meant you couldn’t be hired, there would be no physicians. period.

So – you will be sued, you likely will be dropped from most of these suits. (like 70%). If you settle (which is often the expedient action) you will be in the NPDB. And nothing will happen. You will probably have to have a paragraph description of the suit to put on medical staff applications, but that will be written from your perspective.

And, when you are sued, here is what happens – You tell your insurance company, and they take care of it – they hire the attorney, you will talk to them. Because you are a conscientious physician, you will wonder if there is anything you could have done differently. You will be angry. And… you will go about your business, otherwise. 

A few things to keep in mind – it is the better physicians, often who are sued. Because they take the harder cases.
Only people who are doing nothing effective are perfectly safe from suits.  

[ruszja]

You only end up with a NPDB entry if you either agree to a settlement or if you lose at trial. The great majority of suits are resolved without either of those things happening. If you are hospital based, you often get wrapped up in suits against others (surgeons, intensivists, ER). Frequently you get dropped early on for a variety of reasons. Sucks because you have to disclose it on things like medstaff applications, but all it requires is a 500 character explanation what the suit was about and how it was resolved. Always include a ‘no payment was made by me or anyone on my behalf’ in that explanation.

[aldoctc]

Quote from Raven

…..
For example, will your malpractice insurance premiums automatically go up? Will your malpractice insurance provider drop you? If that happens, can you get coverage from another provider? Will you still be able to renew your state license? What if you want to change jobs/states? Will a new employer still hire you? Will a new state board still give you a license? What if you get reported more than once? Thanks. I know this is a lot of questions.

 
Good advice/comments above.  
 
As far as medical license issues, changing jobs, etc.  
 
State medical board will want to know you’ve been named and pertinent details.  You’ll need to make a written explanation at your next license renewal.  Good idea to run it by ‘your’ attorney (quotation marks b/c ‘your’ attorney is really working for the insurance company, not you) before you send off your renewal.  Save a copy of the explanation for subsequent renewals, new license applications, etc.; MP suits often drag on for years and you’ll need to file the explanation again.  
 
As long as there aren’t other complicating factors like impairment, substance abuse, unprofessional contact with the patient, criminal charges, etc., the state medical board isn’t going to get involved and licensing won’t be an issue.  If you apply for a medical license in another state and/or a new job, the organization(s) involved will want to know the details but having a MP judgement/settlement against you won’t be a determinative issue.  
 
There will be a flurry of activity early on in the case and then…..  nothing, perhaps for years.  Do your best to put it out of your mind and get back to your life.  
 

[ruszja]

Now, having more than one settlement or judgement within X years on your NPDB, that’s where it may indeed get difficult to change jobs, change medmal carriers or get privileges at a better hospital*. And then, it still makes a difference whether you just got wrapped up in someone elses problem and ended up settling or whether there was a specific allegation regarding your care.
 
 
 
 
* [size=”1″]Yes, there is absolutely a difference in the criteria used by some suburban wealthy hospital vs. St Longwaytodrive [/size]

[reza800p_368]

It all depends on the job market. 
2015: If you had only one lawsuit in your resume, some groups refused to hire you.
2023: If you have 3 lawsuits in your resume, still most groups ignore them and hire you. 

Don’t think too much. Life is very random.  

[reza800p_368]

Quote from Raven

I am deathly afraid of getting sued and getting reported to the NPDB (National Provider Data Base). Can someone explain to me the repercussions of being reported? Maybe its not as bad as it seems but I picture it as a permanent strike against you. Kind of like playing baseball but every time you’re up to bat they automatically give you one strike…or is it worse than that?

For example, will your malpractice insurance premiums automatically go up? Will your malpractice insurance provider drop you? If that happens, can you get coverage from another provider? Will you still be able to renew your state license? What if you want to change jobs/states? Will a new employer still hire you? Will a new state board still give you a license? What if you get reported more than once? Thanks. I know this is a lot of questions.

I recommend you to drop mammo completely. 
Even if it is not lawsuit, you will receive a few letters a year complaining about the quality of your service, the delay in your service, the reason that you biopsied or did not biopsy a lesion, etc.  

 

[ruszja]

Quote from OnsiteRad

I recommend you to drop mammo completely. 
Even if it is not lawsuit, you will receive a few letters a year complaining about the quality of your service, the delay in your service, the reason that you biopsied or did not biopsy a lesion, etc.  

 
That may be a local thing. Never had that happen for mammo.
 
OB Ultrasound otoh, I have had a couple of unhappy customers and emails from ‘patient relations’ and the quality folks. Never a relevant miss, but many expecting couples are lets say ‘not perfectly rational’.
 
I worry more about anything peds and OB than mammo. Simply for the 20 year reporting period. Your mammo risk rolls off after 2-3 years.
 
 

[btomba_77]

It sucked at the time made me anxious, the reporting and credentialing was a pain in the ass, made me feel like a bad radiologist.

But eventually the pain fades and life goes back to normal.

(My chair and the hospital legal department settled a complex ED case on my behalf without consulting me and only informed me after the fact. I still carry a grudge, both against the system legal team and my former chair . But luckily my chair got fired and humiliated so theres at least that I can smile about)

[ruszja]

Quote from dergon

(My chair and the hospital legal department settled a complex ED case on my behalf without consulting me and only informed me after the fact. I still carry a grudge, both against the system legal team and my former chair . But luckily my chair got fired and humiliated so theres at least that I can smile about)

 
Yikes.
 
In the setting of a medmal claim, there are a few advantages of working for a large health system / university etc. :
– The amount of insurance or risk retention available is going to be larger than the largest verdict ever made in the state. As a lackey of the system, you have all that coverage available and there is a 0% chance of your personal assets being at risk.
– You are not really the target, the deep pockets of your employer are. There are situations where you can get dropped without a settlement early on as part of a deal where the system settles later but it is done in a way that doesn’t go onto your NPDB record.
– You typically have a capable legal department on the system side that is familiar with all the local players in the medmal industry and has dealt with them on prior cases.
 
There are also downsides:
– Sometimes you dont find out that you got named until after the fact as you were never personally served and/or some hospital yokel accepted service ‘on your behalf’ without your knowledge and without informing you.
– Large systems differ in their litigation philosophy. Some will fight every claim up to the state supreme court, others look at a case and decide whether its cheaper to settle than to defend. If they can make it go away for 100k rather than paying several lawyers 200k to defend it, they will settle whether you want or not.
 
 
As a young surgeon or interventionalist (GI, IR, Uro, Pulmo), you want to cut your teeth as an employee of a university or health system. If bad sh!t happens, it was always ‘the disease’, because you know every patient at the university is sooo complicated and basically moribund anyway 😉
 

[reza800p_368]

Quote from fw

Quote from OnsiteRad

I recommend you to drop mammo completely. 
Even if it is not lawsuit, you will receive a few letters a year complaining about the quality of your service, the delay in your service, the reason that you biopsied or did not biopsy a lesion, etc.  

That may be a local thing. Never had that happen for mammo.

OB Ultrasound otoh, I have had a couple of unhappy customers and emails from ‘patient relations’ and the quality folks. Never a relevant miss, but many expecting couples are lets say ‘not perfectly rational’.

I worry more about anything peds and OB than mammo. Simply for the 20 year reporting period. Your mammo risk rolls off after 2-3 years.

 
Might be a local thing. At first, I thought it was me. Be later I found out everybody who does mammo in our neighborhood, gets a few letters in mail complaining about the quality of their work. Our mammo patients are really demanding.