Med Mal News

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that medical personnel in hospitals are reporting for work when ill, endangering the health of patients and co-workers and possibly impairing their abilities to perform at their best. Anupam B. Jena, et al. Presenteeism Among Resident Physicians, JAMA. 2010;304(11):1166-a-1168. Fifty-eight percent of the 744 second- and third-year residents surveyed reported that in the previous year they had gone to work at least once while sick. Some hospitals had significantly higher rates of this so-called “presenteeism,” indicating to the researchers that, at some institutions, hospital culture may pressure health care providers to avoid absenteeism, to the detriment of quality of care.

The California Medical Association (CMA) has filed a lawsuit against Blue Shield of California seeking to halt its publication of physician ratings in its Blue Shield's Blue Ribbon Recognition Program ' ratings CMA claims are based on faulty information that is presented in a misleading way. The program awards certain physicians its highest “blue ribbon” rating, placing a blue ribbon next to their listings in the Blue Shield publication. In its lawsuit, CMA notes that not all physicians are even eligible to receive such a blue ribbon, the absence of which next to a doctor's name might indicate to patients and potential patients that the doctor's work is somehow substandard. Additionally, CMA says Blue Shield's system fails to evaluate patient outcomes or check to see if another physician performed a procedure on a patient, among other complaints. “As physicians, our number one priority is our patients,” said CMA President Brennan Cassidy, M.D., in a statement. “We believe by using and publicizing what is a faulty assessment of physicians, without adequate disclosures of the limitations in the ratings, Blue Shield is both misleading the public and potentially damaging the reputations of thousands of doctors.”