Injured patients who want to help and be heard,
click here.
Thomas Jefferson said that given the choice between
government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would choose
to have newspapers.
In medicine we have government without newspapers. Patients
cannot find out what they need to know to make informed choices. No one in
medicine records or reports the information patients need to know the most. So
patients will have to.
Blacklisting Patients
Caregivers need only be on the same page.
If you show up in a physician's office with an injury that
was incurred in medicine, you are not going to leave with an accurate diagnosis.
You are on a list that is kept mentally, culturally, of the kinds of
patients who are to be denied accurate diagnosis and treatment and branded in
ways that can interfere with their getting medical care for the rest of their lives.
A conspiracy against patients with or without a physical list.
Blacklisting is mischaracterized by the medical community
in order to deny its existence in their own minds as well as in the public's. They dismiss it as though blacklisting required a physical list
being passed around. It can happen with no communication between
physicians at all, as long as they are on the same page, as though they had a
list. As long as they, as a group,
are more interested in protecting each other than in protecting patients,
patients with iatrogenic injuries are a good window on how blacklisting works
and how damaging it is for patients.
Physicians assume a basic level of honesty from their peers.
Expectations influence perception.
They do not anticipate sins like rape from colleagues and the deliberate obfuscation of such.
So a patient arriving claiming to have been raped by some healthcare
professional is regarded as a crazy person who potentially could
ruin the career of an innocent colleague. When the doctor currently applied to
for help labels the patient
as crazy and telegraphs that to other
doctors, along with the notion that this patient could harm a colleague, a received
view emerges in the medical community to which all others unthinkingly conform.
They don't recognize their own self-interested cloud of clichés, false
assumptions and lies as they turn the white wall of silence
into into a blacklist with nothing more than a phone call or a nuance in a
referral negatively branding the injured patient.
Here is a typical example, received in an email, of how
patients experience it.
I am a Research Biologist, an Occupational Therapist and a
Certified Hand Therapist. I was injured during surgeries. . . I was told
by a physician's assistant . . . that I was obviously injured and that no doctor
in San Diego would ever admit this. I didn't believe this statement at the
time, however, time has proved it 100% accurate.
I have accumulated enough documentation to demonstrate how
tests were performed inaccurately, data interpreted inaccurately and how my
medical problems have not been entered into the medical record. . . I also
found out that there are no agencies or groups willing to investigate this
matter.
Injured patients have no friends in medicine.
Most, but not all, blacklisting occurs without a list.
Doctors, like members of any normal group, watch out for each other. If a patient never pays bills, or repeatedly files lawsuits, or habitually becomes violent, or travels around trying to get illegal prescriptions, one would expect a doctor who knew about it to warn colleagues.* But that kind of
communication also results in the blacklisting of innocent patients who need treatment.
Especially if the injuries are iatrogenic.
It does not require a tip from another physician for
a patient to go from doctor to
doctor to doctor without getting diagnosed or treated. Such a patient usually
will never know why it is happening, but can it be called anything other than
blacklisting when the community has a shared understanding that results in the
members of that community collectively denying care to one patient?
Blacklisting can result in permanent harm or even death and can be criminally
illegal. What are the odds of the police pursuing it? Near zero. How is a
patient who figures out that it is going on to persuade anyone of it?
Where will be the proof? Doctors create the record. And the records are created
to protect doctors, not patients (see defensive
documentation). The police don't even know where to start looking. And state medical boards are run by other doctors
who are on the same page as the doctors doing the blacklisting. The very suggestion of having been
blacklisted "strains credulity" to their way of thinking. They have that
much faith in each other and that little faith in patients.
They also have that much faith in themselves. It is normal
for them deny the existence of obvious injuries needing treatment, branding them as
psychosomatic, and choosing to believe instead in that which serves their own
interests no matter how fanciful that might be. They really do believe the
self-serving diagnoses they create in order to protect themselves and their
colleagues when they brand injured patients as crazy or having "Conversion
Disorder" or as trying to cash in with a lawsuit or get revenge with a grievance
or any of the other pejorative nonsense they choose to believe about the
patients they injure, patients who only are asking for help.
Look at this graph. It documents how it was done to me and how it
can be done to you
if you ever have a problem in medicine. Patients who
understand it have a better chance of surviving in spite of it.
Overtness
It is not always as subtle as described above. Sometimes it is one physician blatantly telling another physician to find nothing wrong with a patient, to give no tests that could uncover injuries, and no referrals that could help the patient because anything found could indict a fellow physician.
Why would a physician risk his license and intentionally ruin the life of a patient? Well, there's really no risk. Who is going to report it? And who would believe the report? And who would do anything about it if they did?
There is no one on the side of patients when things go wrong. But still, what could be so awful that covering it up would be worth ruining the life of
the patient? The statistics are elsewhere on this site about how many assaults, rapes and homicides are committed by healthcare workers each year against patients. Do you know why there are not a corresponding number of convictions for committing those crimes? One of the reasons is that no one in healthcare believes that their colleagues
do these things, so they don't believe they are covering up anything. They simply refuse to find or record the injuries and/or evidence of the crimes.
The same for errors.
Their belief in their own innocence and entitlement overwhelms accurate
observation and self-awareness. They don't think they are covering up anything. At most
they think they only are helping to prevent misunderstandings that might result from
creating diagnoses that might create misimpressions among people outside of
their group. No records of the injuries, or the claims of the partient, are created.
The
injured patient doesn't get diagnosed or treated.
All it takes for a patient to become blacklisted is the
potential for a case to be made against a colleague.
Doctors gossip about it among themselves in ways that can result in further
injuries for the already injured patients. There is nothing patients can do to
stop doctors from doing this, but doctors can stop patients from warning other
patients about the doctors who do this. Defamation suits and threats thereof
routinely are made to injured patients to silence them.
Physical Lists
Since discussion of this issue
is in its infancy, it easily is dismissed by caregivers speaking of it as though it
required delivering hardcopy of a list in the dark of night.
However, sometimes it is. Like
http://www.doctorsknow.us/about.php. Billing themselves as risk management
for the 21st Century, they keep a database of plaintiffs. In other words, if
someone in medicine injures you, whether intentionally or not, and you
sue them for it, they put you on a list in order to prevent other caregivers from
treating you in the future.
You cannot see the list. You have to be a member. That's sort of like
delivering a physical list in the
dark of night, isn't it?
Patients cannot do the same thing to warn each other about
incompetent or even untrustworthy doctors. Just filing a complaint can result in
the most insidious retaliation.
Doctors are supposed to consider the seriousness of the malady,
not the virtuousness of the patient.
Medicine is not like other professions. The consequences for its customers are too great. Doctors are supposed to treat villains as well as heroes, even if treating them enables villains to commit more villainy. But
they don't. If you were to go to your primary care physician with wounds received when one of his colleagues raped you, your primary care physician would diagnose you as being crazy, and so would every other physician you went to. When you hear in the news about a patient who finally lashes
out in frustration, the medical community unites in diagnosing the patient as being paranoid and crazy, and journalists always accept that without question. After all, the pronouncement has been made by physicians. Why would anyone question it?
The
healthcare industry is a monopoly as much as the water company or
an electric utility company and has similar obligations. If power and water utilities refused service to someone, at least the victims would know that they had been cut off.
But when patients are manipulated out of care, often they don't understand what
is happening, even when it is overtly declined it, and they are left in a more sinister darkness.
Physicians rationalize that patients always can go to another
physician. But they cannot. Physicians are a community. On important levels they
look out for each other. Despite their differences and the disputes common in
any community, a patient with an iatrogenic injury rarely can get a diagnosis of
that injury in the record, and likely cannot even get treatment for it.
Despite
their differences and disputes, if it appears that someone in medicine could become the
subject of a suit or grievance, they unite to defeat, if not destroy, the
patient. That is not an exaggeration. They will let an injured patient's
untreated injuries become ruinous rather than give care that, in addition to
saving the patient, might make possible the
patient's holding responsible the health care providers who caused the injuries.
Referral from a physician to a radiologist:
"Re: John Smith. This 57-year-old builder is requesting a CAT scan on his lumbar
spine to be performed on a private, fee-paying basis. Mr. Smith is a malcontent
of the highest order and holds a very warped view of life . . . expresses
contempt for orthopedic surgeons, chiropractors, osteopaths, acupuncturists . .
. "
from "The World's Worsts" by Les Krantz & Sue Sveum
Someone injured badly enough by one and then denied treatment
for the injuries by the others rationally will learn to distrust the orthopedic
surgeons, chiropractors, osteopaths, acupuncturists and others who did that to
him and become malcontent. I advise patients to hide discontent.
This is from an email another patient wrote to me about her
experience:
"All it takes is for one doctor to decide he doesn't like
you, and the patient will find that he can't get treatment anywhere else."
A disabled veteran we know of received this in a email
from a VA employee:
"I'm sure nobody would admit to blacklisting: they will say that they
use flags to warn staff of "disruptive" behavior (these appear in VISTA
and CPRS). . . "
A more Sinister Darkness
People who are victims of natural disasters, like hurricanes
and earthquakes, usually escape having psychological baggage weigh them down for
long afterwards. People who are victims of disasters caused by humans, like the
Exxon Valdez, have a higher rate of mental trauma. But at least that still was
an accident.
People who are victims of injuries incurred in medicine
suffer more. Especially when the injuries were caused intentionally. Which is
how the subsequent injuries are caused when they cannot get treatment and their
condition deteriorates further. They are surrounded by a community
determined to make it appear that the problem is the patient, which makes it even
worse. That is people conspiring to injure the victim. And then when the patient cannot
even get recognition of the injuries, can that be called anything less than evil?
It is not
uncommon for people never to recover spiritually from having a group of people
single them out for unjust, and sometimes life-ruining, treatment.
Do you think you can find anyone in medicine who even is aware of
having done that? The mental gymnastics they do to arrange their beliefs in ways
that leave
themselves feeling righteous are disturbing to behold. But if they didn't do
that, they could not believe that they are objective and lucid beyond what even
a federal judge would imagine him or herself to be. In other professions, they
understand how personal interests can interfere with objectivity. In medicine
they don't.
Objective
In general, people feel that other people's perceptions
might be shaped by socioeconomic factors or political or religious commitments
or loyalties, but that their own perceptions are the objective truth.
Whose subjectivity is more likely to lead us to an
honest appraisal of how many lives are lost, and how those lives are lost, in medicine - the people whose lives are being lost or the people who don't
want to be held accountable for losing those lives? It has been demonstrated
that patients are a more accurate source of information about adverse event in
medicine than anyone in medicine is.
It is self-serving, ignorant, ridicule to evaluate the quality of
this information by recounting what a confused patients says to one doctor.
Patients might not know terminology and best practices, but they know what
happened and they don't try to cover it up. This has been studied with organization and oversight. Patients do not have a vested interest in hiding the truth. Their lives depend on finding it.
When given the opportunity, they are the most accurate source of information in
medicine (see
Medical Reporting).
No one in medicine wants that information. And yet they manage to believe the
opposite about themselves.
First Priority
If nothing else is learned from this page, it should be
learned that the well being of patients is not the first priority of health care
workers. Their own well being comes first and they are willing to cause physical
injuries to patients to secure it.
Another patient, Cynthia Sullivan, sent this message on
facebook:
"My ex husband died and his autopsy became missing. When I went to NC they dont
have electronic records but they asked to sign a release. Then BAM! They refuse
to give me my electronic records as well as HIPPA. This is so sick I cant
believe it almost. . . I actually had one md call and say 'if you dont turn
me in Ill help you.' Can you imagine that."
What's hard to imagine is one MD trying to help. We rarely
hear of that.
Reporting Blacklisting
By the way, do you know what the police say when you try to report blacklisting? They say to contact the state medical board. Do you know what the state medical board in Ohio says when you report it to them? They investigate it for two years and then decide that the physician has not violated any provisions of law that their agency is
charged with enforcing, because they are not the police and and so they not authorized to
investigate crimes even though they accept those cases and delay them until they
are too old for anyone to investigate. You know what provision of law they are charged with at that point? The provision that requires them to send their investigation to the agency that is charged with enforcing that law. Which is the police.
Which is where you started. But now the case is too old and the trail is too
cold
and the police still think it must be someone else's job. Burt
and Kashyap are two examples of this
being the runaround that patients get.
No one in medicine thinks this is an issue - because it is not happening to
them. So they never are going to pay attention to it, let alone fix it. If the
well being of patients were their first priority, they would. But it's not.
Their perspective is so self-serving they cannot see even that.
or
Footnote:
*It should be noted that patients do not have this right (see asterisk above). Patients get sued for defamation if they warn each other about medical professionals. Physicians are allowed to talk. Patients are not. This leaves patients ignorant and powerless and further shields medical professionals. When even their victims cannot report
it, medical professionals are further shielded from normal inhibitions against acting out when experiencing lust or jealousy or anger or any of the other emotions to which they succumb from time to time.
George Bernard Shaw on medicine:
"A conspiracy, not a profession...Every doctor will allow
a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than
violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away."