This page is intended to help you effectively deal with problems,
organizing the site for quick action.

• Warning of a Case
  This may be a complication or bad result, a worrisome doctor-patient relationship, or the attitude and remarks of the patient. At this early stage, if you are still caring for the patient, you can do what is impossible later. Work on the care, the patient, and the chart. Don't miss these signals and the irrecoverable opportunity they give you. The most important two opportunities are to work with the patient and to establish your high standard of care in the chart.
  1) Identify vulnerabilities
  2) Document your good care, work with patient and family, protect the records.
  3) Use consults and references to validate your efforts and the standard of care
  5) Check billing
   
• Notification of a Case
  This uusally comes a filing and serving of a formal case, but may come as a letter requesting a settlement. Now you no longer have a medical relationship with the patient, and events proceed under the very different rules of the legal process. If you have dedicated some days to learning them well by now, please do so. It will save you time and money later.
  1) Check your policies
  2) Check the filing and serving process, it can be technically flawed in several ways
  3) Meet your attorney, and if possible case worker to be sure you are a good team.
  4) Check out our workbook. Whatever system of organization you do use, start early while memory is fresh and before records are lost..
   
• Licensing Board and Credentialing Issues
  These usually operate with even less openness and predictability than malpractice trials. Be sure you think it out ahead of time, and take the appropriate steps for that process. There are few external forces that can influence these processes, but legal counsel is one, JCAHO in some situations may be another.
  1) Most such cases are routine and don't result in adverse action. However, be alert for one that has to be taken seriously, so first get the records. Unlike a malpractice case, they are not always available to you.
  2) You may need an experienced attorney if you have any doubt about the clarity of the matter.
  3) If you need counsel, check how much your insurance policy will pay.
  4) Their methods and standards are different, so be certain to lean about them.
     
• Billing Problems
  These can engulf you in several ways. Medicare audits may occur. Sometimes a law enforcement action occurs from complaints. And the plaintiff in a malpractice action may complain about you billing. This is a more common tool in a trial, to further cast doubt on you. And that may spill out into other avenues that cost you a lot of money and time. You need to not only do billing properly, but in a malpractice trial prepare for outrageous claims an expet witness will make against billing which your staff did completely by the book .