The St. Louis dispatch recently had an article exposing the near impossible task of reviewing a doctor’s “resume” or finding any detailed information on Missouri medical malpractice cases they were involved in or if they have any reported medical errors to any supervisory board. Without stepping a toenail on the proverbial soap-box or invoking even a slight stretch of the imagination, we can see where this is something particularly important to patients awaiting surgery. See Serious Medical Errors, Little Public Information.
It began as an investigation into a specific 2007 surgery where a doctor, from DePaul Health Center, removed the wrong kidney. The reporter began his research at, what is implied to be, a typical starting point for these types of things. As he asserts, one would think a mistake of this size would have many different agencies involved. Not so. Here is a list of all the agencies he contacted regarding this incident: Joint Commission –who accredits hospitals, the Missouri Courts, Missouri Division of Insurance – in search of the malpractice database, National Practitioner Data Bank – which states what doctors paid malpractice claims, Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services – who investigates errors at hospitals, Missouri Board of Professional Registration for the Healing Arts – which disciplines doctors, and finally DePaul Health Center itself.
Not one of these agencies had a clear description of what happened, nor did they list who the specific doctor was that botched the surgery. Each agency would remove any identifiers before releasing the information – which kinda defeats the purpose of the request - or they simply would not answer the question at all. This is the only information the reporter was able to obtain: there was a negligent incident – not necessarily the one in question and there was a Missouri Medical Malpractice Lawsuit payout of $1.7 million – not necessarily to the patient in question. Any other information was too broad to even try to associate with this medical malpractice case.
