Day On Torts : Tennessee Injury Lawyer & Attorney : John Day : Personal Injury, Accidents : Serving Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville

A recent study gives yet another reason of why it is difficult for a plaintiff to win a medical malpractice case in Nashville.

MTSU’s Business and Economic Research Center has released a study that states that puts health care industry’s annual economic impact in Nashville at $30 billion. That represents  an increase of 60 percent since 2004.  The number of jobs in teh Nashville MSA directly tied to the health care industry has grown from 94,000 to more than 110,000.

The study reports that "[m]ore than 56 major health care companies (public and private) have chosen Nashville as their home, and seven of the nation’s 12 leading for-profit acute care hospital companies are located in Nashville, controlling more than one-third of the investor-owned hospitals in the United States."

Believe it or not,  in the Nashville MSA 1 out of 12 occupations was a health care occupation in 2008. paying total wages of $4.7 billion.

Here is the Executive Summary of the report.  The entire report may be read here.

The challenge for the plaintiff's lawyer is to help those health care-related jurors understand that a verdict for a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case is not a verdict against the industry that feeds their family.   Jurors must be persuaded  that every person - doctor, nurse, truck driver or lawyer - is responsible for harm caused by his or her  negligence, and that a verdict for a patient is not an indictment of the entire health care delivery system.

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According to the 2009 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey, only 46 percent of U.S. doctors use electronic medical records, compared to 99 percent of doctors in the Netherlands and 97 percent of doctors in New Zealand and Norway.

"We spend far more than any of the other countries in the survey, yet a majority of U.S. primary care doctors say their patients often can't afford care, and a wide majority of primary care physicians don't have advanced computer systems to access patient test results, anticipate and avoid medication errors or support care for chronically ill patients," said Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen, lead author of an article appearing in Health Affairs.

The survey also reports that

• 58% of U.S. physicians, by far the most of any country surveyed, said their patients often had difficulty paying for medications and care. Half of U.S. doctors spend substantial time dealing with the restrictions insurance companies place on patients’ care.

• Only 29% of U.S. physicians said their practice had arrangements for getting patients afterhours care—so they could avoid visiting a hospital emergency room. Nearly all Dutch, New Zealand, and U.K. doctors said their practices had arrangements for after-hours care.

Read this article in Healthcare IT News to learn more about the survey. 

By the way, physicans who treat Medicare patients are getting a huge handout from taxpayers to adopt health care information technology.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law in February 2009 includes as much as $64,000 in financial incentives to physicians who have a Medicare population of 30% and up to $44,000 for those with fewer Medicare patients.    Doctors and hospitals with Medicare and Medicaid patients who have already purchased such systems and use them in a meaningful way will receive billions of dollars in incentives.

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