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Paris Regional Medical Center Puts a Blogger Critic on a "Monkey Trial"
Featured in: Hippocrates
Not everyone (yet) in healthcare understands that suing bloggers is futile. Paris Regional is fighting fire with gasoline!The news has been out for a week or so. Rural Texas hospital finally sues anonymous blogger that criticized it for over two years. Hospital impact has a highlight and comments from anonyblogger over the last two years.
Now, why would I compare this to the famous Monkey Trial?
Well, both are about (ahem) certain elements in small-town America that are well behind times. Which is not enough for them. They have to have their day in court to prove it and let the whole world know! Back in 1925 it was about teaching this crazy thing called evolution. Now it is about blogger's freedom of speech.
What exactly is Paris Regional accusing the blogger of?
Quoting iHealthBeat's interpretation of the complaint, which also includes claims of HIPAA violations:
Paris Regional Medical Center alleges that on several occasions the blog posted "false and misleading statements with malice." According to the lawsuit, the blogger falsely accused the hospital of criminal wrongdoing in operating and managing the hospital, including Medicare fraud. The hospital added that the statements were aimed to and did harm the hospital's reputation and discouraged business.
The bloggers claimed to receive their information from hospital employees, a contractual breach of the employee labor confidentiality agreement, according to the hospital.
Well, I have news for the lawyers and executives of Essent Healthcare, the parent company of Paris Regional Medical Center. There is plenty of "false and misleading" information on the Internet. You cannot control it, unlike local small-town newspapers and elected trial court judges.
Learn to live with the fact than anyone, anytime and anywhere can say anything they want on the Internet about anyone
What Essent trigger-happy lawyers are doing is attracting national attention and giving credence to allegations of wrongdoing and fraud. To prove that those statements are false you have to prove they are not fact. So why not invite Medicare to look at the books and then publish results of inspection that found nothing wrong? Because otherwise you are just stirring up the publicity that puts pressure on CMS to actually investigate !
Worried you are losing control of your reputation? Well, did you ever have it? Reputation is what others (not you) think and say about you. Now with the Internet every voice will be heard and there is nowhere to hide.
Now about the HIPAA and breach of contract claims
These of course could be more serious - if they were real. As far as HIPAA goes I have not seen what the real breach of patient confidentiality is here. HIPAA is always bandied around as an excuse for just about anything, but only a handful of cases (really flagrant ones) went anywhere. Regarding business confidentiality, maybe there is a legal case here, but leaks occur in every large organization every day and as Hewlett-Packard boardroom saga has shown trying to fight them too hard could really boomerang back at you.
The Prognosis: If Essent presses ahead with litigation, their best-case scenario is Pyrrhic victory, which is really a loss
The allegations are out there already. Nothing short of addressing their substance would help. If a blogger is uncovered and fired, his (her) attacks would only escalate. Sympathetic employees would only have more motivation to keep the leaks flowing. Litigious executives would win no friends.
Like the Monkey Trial, this case is driven by irrationality. Watching the old world of control slip away and being powerless to stop it.
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Comments (5)
#2: Chilling Effect
... is already here with Flea-GATE showing people that it pays (literally!) to be careful. The question only is how far would it go.
What I wanted to highlight here, is chilling effect or not, that particular hospital already lost, because the things they would rather keep quiet turned into a national story. If they back their critic in the corner he'd have nothing to lose.
Finally, a lot depends on jurisdiction. Elected local judges in places like Texas might be likely to swat a critic, especially when the state does not have an Anti-SLAPP law. So watch out in Texas but be at ease in California or Florida.
#3: paris tx
This hospital has a areputation since the merger. I have lived there for 30 years and worked at both hospitals.
This is merit to this bloggers information and the hospital should do an internal audit
and correct their problems.
They should look into some of the doctors who practice there history and why some doctors have lost privilages.
I am sure JACHO would like to hear some stories and the blogger should contact them.
My neice was recently services by their ER after a seizure and a concussion, they let her go without using a wheelchair to take her out and she had another seizure in the parking lot.
They took her back in did an MRI and let her go. Two weeks later she had lost memory all along and pain in her jaw. She went to her ENT and she had a BROKEN JAW from her fall at the hospital.
I am encouraging her to sue for the incompetnce. She has just had two surgeries on her jugular and carotoid with tumors. She was not a just "let go" patient.
They should have considered her history and been more caregul
I could type many blogs about the care my family has received. These used to be good hospitals but not NOW.
I encourage the staff to do audits on their care rather than suing. I plan to report this incident with my neice to JACHO and contact my lawyer to represent her.
She has limited time and a family to support and these jerks just caused her more pain and suffering by not treating a nuero patient competently.
I say look inside, you might be opening a pandoras box as a lawsuit will make people look into the care given at these hospitals.
BJ
First off let me tell you , this hospital has got to be bay far one of the worst in the country. Secondly, I have been a patient, have known patients and lived in that town for years. I have never ever been treated right or been given auality service by this hospital. The force you to see a nurse prac. Make you sit in the waiting room for hours on end no matter what your condition. I was miscarrying my baby , bleeding all over and all the triage nurse said to me after waiting for her to see me 4 hours was "well just wait because if you are miscarrying there is nothing we can do for you, sit down!" I was mortifed and cried the rest of the time there.
My daughter has a horrible life threatening illness called panhypopituitarism, I take her in for a 102 degree fever which could kill her and we end up waiting for 5 hours in the waiting room.
They took her temperature, the triage nurse tried to hide it from me , my brother who was with me saw him write down 99.7 in the computer. We called him on it and all he could do was stutter, we walked out and went to Sulpher Springs.
That same visit an 3 month old infant walked in with 105 fever, they did the same to them, just made them wait, the child could have died from a fever like that or suffered brina damage. Another one during that visit was a man brought in for a heart attack. Again, they made him wait in the ER. He passed out 3 times, still waiting!
It took them 2 hours to take the information from the front counter where everyone could see it. They had a stack of social security numbers sitting on the counter with no nurse in site to take them. This is something according to heppa that should not be sitting there! Anyone could have taken anyones identity right there. And they do it all the time.
My MIL went into this hospital due to a mild stroke. They admitted her without insurance for 2 days. During that 2 days they ran NO TESTS , she just sat in a room and had a nurse come in every now and then to ask how she was. She left the hospital with a 25,000 dollar bill, FOR NOTHING! THEY DID NOTHING! She asked for an itemized statement to see where the cost went, they refused. After a month of telling them it was her right they mailed her one that was unreadable. Every other item was listed as "service". What TYPE OF SERVICE?
I walked out on my last visit before we ever saw a DR and was ever taken back. And I plan on contacting my insurance company to see if they try to charge us, if they do, I am suing the heck out of them.
You say you believe every word? Don't do that when it comes to lawyers. There was a joke asking how one knows when a lawyer is lying. The answer was: when his lips move.
I think "Man of LaMancha" would be more apt.
As I opined at InsureBlog, there is a real danger that even an unsuccessful lawsuit could have a chilling effect on mdbloggers. How so? The court has ordered the (thus far anonymous) bloggers' IP to disclose their identities. For an anonymous blogger, this could be particularly dangerous: I'm not aware of any liability insurance policies which would cover the issues involved.
Food for thought.