Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Defamation?

Yesterday I received a letter from lawyers representing a doctor named in my post Tony's letter to the Medical Board of Queensland. They claim the letter contains defamatory statements and demanded I remove the post.

At the time I posted this blog entry, Tony was missing and left a public message of possible self harm. People were looking for him, his family was worried and many people in the programming communities Tony frequented online feared for his safety. I published Tony's letter at that time for those people online that had seen and were discussing his message, but had no awareness of the real situation.

I do not wish to remove the blog post as it captures a small part of the prolonged trauma Tony endured in engaging with the medical system. I have no reason to doubt that all the practitioners Tony saw genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. This does not change the experience of the patient though. It can be a demoralising cycle of slowly progressing from generalists to specialists, booking appointments weeks/months into the future meanwhile enduring symptoms, bearing the financial burden, deciphering sometimes poor communication, having to evaluate practitioners and their advice and decide next steps in the face of enduring pain.

I am disappointed that one of the doctor's involved has resorted to this level of legal involvement against me. Instead of attempting to censor, he could have simply written a rebuttal. I defy anyone that claims the medical system (as a whole) handled Tony's case well. Therefore there is room for improvement that is better served by reflection and constructive criticism rather than a legal approach.

I am not a lawyer and have no experience with defamation law. I have removed the doctor's name from the blot post in an attempt to avoid legal confrontation.

4 comments:

Mohammed Abdullah said...

Some dr's. should be called criminals, thieves, ...

Some of the experiences I have had with doctors are as follows:
1. The antibiotic dr.: prescribes antibiotics for any illness and charges you $100 for a 2 minute visit. However after getting a second opinion from another dr. who is now our family dr. clearly proved that antibiotics were not required. 90% of the time that one of the family members saw dr. no.1 antibiotics where prescribed. Now with dr. no2 I think in the past 5 years we have been given antibiotics 2 or 3 times. 1 of those times because I asked for it as a precautionary medicine (2 weeks ago because I am going over seas)

2. The I need to see you about 3 - 6 times before I can diagnose your symptoms dr.: makes sure that you see them a number of times the first time charging you a ridiculous amount and then each consecutive time charging you about 50 - 70% of the initial charge until they are satisfied they have made enough money of you that they can tell you we new it wasn't that problem we thought it could be but we just wanted to make sure even though all your tests came back negative.

3. The I don't want you to waste my time dr. because I am too important: With our recent situation regarding our unborn child (who has what is called hypo-plastic left heart defect) we saw a number of specialists. The neonatal cardiac specialist we were supposed to see was unavailable that afternoon because something had come up that he put another doctor forward for the job. This dr. was the rudest human being we had met to the point that my wife was in tears and the nurses in the room were embarrassed by his behavior. He walks in all arrogant and high and mighty telling us that he is better than the original dr. and handles more of these cases than the other dr. and that he is busy and really doesn't want to be here for us and that he in his own mind is more qualified than the other dr. even though he clearly wasn't and was not recommended and we needed to choose to come back another day to see the other dr or if we chose him he would be our dr during the entire pregnancy. His tone of voice and demeanor and attitude was really horrific. If anyone knows me they know that it takes a lot to offend me and this guy did it in a matter of seconds. Boy am I glad we decided to stick with the original recommendation. The difference between the two is like the difference between a devil and an angel.

4. The super expensive, too good that you might not be able to afford me specialist dr. - This one really gets to me. My wife being staff at the Mater hospital gets a pretty good discount on medical bills. After our baby cardiac scans and ultrasounds the cardiac specialist explained everything to us. Then he explained that another specialist will come in and explain this and that and our options etc. So this specialist comes in and literally stood there for about 2 - 3 minutes and repeated what the other dr. said to us and sent us a $300 bill. In fact what he explained was explained by the first dr. a lot better. My wife and I where both shocked at this bill. We already told the hospital that we will not go down this path that this specialist handles but they forced him upon us saying that legally we have to see him so that we have the options. Well then if we are forced to see him then they should pay the bill.

Anyway I just thought I would put my 2 cents worth in since I am familiar with Tony's situation and that obviously he knows that he is not alone dealing with some of the incompetence that exists in our medical system.

But just remember for every 5 bad dr's. there's a good one :). As a final example of this, the neonatal cardiac surgeon that saw us sent us a bill that was close to $600, however he decided to bulk bill us and we ended up paying $0. We didn't even ask for it. Apparently they can decide to bulk bill when ever they like.

Mohammed Abdullah said...

Doctors...what doctors? Sometimes I think some of them should be called criminals, thieves, ...

Some of the experiences I have had with doctors are as follows:
1. The antibiotic dr.: prescribes antibiotics for any illness and charges you $100 for a 2 minute visit. However after getting a second opinion from another dr. who is now our family dr. clearly proved that antibiotics were not required. 90% of the time that one of the family members saw dr. no.1 antibiotics where prescribed. Now with dr. no2 I think in the past 5 years we have been given antibiotics 2 or 3 times. 1 of those times because I asked for it as a precautionary medicine (2 weeks ago because I am going over seas)

2. The I need to see you about 3 - 6 times before I can diagnose your symptoms dr.: makes sure that you see them a number of times the first time charging you a ridiculous amount and then each consecutive time charging you about 50 - 70% of the initial charge until they are satisfied they have made enough money of you that they can tell you we new it wasn't that problem we thought it could be but we just wanted to make sure even though all your tests came back negative.

3. The I don't want you to waste my time dr. because I am too important: With our recent situation regarding our unborn child (who has what is called hypo-plastic left heart defect) we saw a number of specialists. The neonatal cardiac specialist we were supposed to see was unavailable that afternoon because something had come up that he put another doctor forward for the job. This dr. was the rudest human being we had met to the point that my wife was in tears and the nurses in the room were embarrassed by his behavior. He walks in all arrogant and high and mighty telling us that he is better than the original dr. and handles more of these cases than the other dr. and that he is busy and really doesn't want to be here for us and that he in his own mind is more qualified than the other dr. even though he clearly wasn't and was not recommended and we needed to choose to come back another day to see the other dr or if we chose him he would be our dr during the entire pregnancy. His tone of voice and demeanor and attitude was really horrific. If anyone knows me they know that it takes a lot to offend me and this guy did it in a matter of seconds. Boy am I glad we decided to stick with the original recommendation. The difference between the two is like the difference between a devil and an angel.

4. The super expensive, too good that you might not be able to afford me specialist dr. - This one really gets to me. My wife being staff at the Mater hospital gets a pretty good discount on medical bills. After our baby cardiac scans and ultrasounds the cardiac specialist explained everything to us. Then he explained that another specialist will come in and explain this and that and our options etc. So this specialist comes in and literally stood there for about 2 - 3 minutes and repeated what the other dr. said to us and sent us a $300 bill. In fact what he explained was explained by the first dr. a lot better. My wife and I where both shocked at this bill. We already told the hospital that we will not go down this path that this specialist handles but they forced him upon us saying that legally we have to see him so that we have the options. Well then if we are forced to see him then they should pay the bill.

Anyway I just thought I would put my 2 cents worth in since I am familiar with Tony's situation and that obviously he knows that he is not alone dealing with some of the incompetence that exists in our medical system.

But just remember for every 5 bad dr's. there's a good one :). As a final example of this, the neonatal cardiac surgeon that saw us sent us a bill that was close to $600, however he decided to bulk bill us and we ended up paying $0. We didn't even ask for it. Apparently they can decide to bulk bill when ever they like.

Murray C said...

I have a story similar to Tony's, being repeatedly fobbed off by doctors to the point where you question your sanity. It was cold comfort realising the doctors were wrong when the whole thing ended with me spending two weeks in intensive care with acute pancreatitis.

There are definitely problems with the public health system, but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that doctors are just people, with character flaws like anyone else, and gaps in knowledge/training. You shouln't be afraid to question or demand more from them, or take control like Tony had to. I don't know if I'd be here if I hadn't demanded (LOUDLY - and I don't usually do loud :-) to be transferred out of the hospital where I was receiving little to no treatment, to the private hospital where I was immediately sent to intensive care upon admission.

As for the defamation claim, it seems like it wouldn't hold up in court. As far as I know, we haven't yet adopted the UK's handling of defamation/libel where the truthfulness of the claim isn't relevant (see Simon Singh vs. Chiropractic). At least I hope not.

Tony Morris said...

Hi Murray,
I completely agree that doctors should be expected to make lots of mistakes and I am sympathetic to many anecdotes that I hear, including some of my own. Indeed, many doctors I encountered said "I simply do not know, but I'll do what I can to help you come to know", which is honest and even helpful. I only expect honesty and an earnest effort.

However, you say that I took control. While this is true to some extent, some doctors explicitly deny access to that control, while simultaneously failing by virtue of their own limitations. In my opinion, you can't have both, without earning a description of dangerous.

As far as I am concerned, Doctor Michael McEniery is dangerous. After recently seeking legal advice, I very much invite a legal challenge, if only to bring public awareness to this matter, especially given the amateurish failing of the governmental body responsible for otherwise doing so (remember that kid in school with short attention and poor comprehension? That kid now works for the governmental health quality commission).