At one of our hospitals there is a system set up that when medical records are requested to be sent to an attorney, they are reviewed after being sent to evaluate if there was a deviation of care by risk management. I have the unfortuante job of reviewing some of them if surgery is involved. (I blew off too many early morning meetings). The latest was amazing. This was a patient who had been shot while performing armed robbery as a 20 y/o and had been in prison for 9 years. He is on full state and Federal disability due to low back pain from the GSW. He had been back to prison 2 other times, one time for climbing into a pharmacy through a 2 story window and trying to steal drugs. He has a 50 pack year smoking history and is an alcoholic. He gets methadone at a pain center and does not take his oral hypoglycemics for his DM. He has three stents for his cardiac disease but does not take coumadin for his afib. When he tried to break into the pharmacy, he fell and shattered both hips. These were first repaired but he has since had to have the whole hips replaced. Anyway, he was brough in from a strip club with severe chest pain and cardiogenic shock due to a massive MI. He was brough back and was found to have complete occlusion of one of his coronaries by cardiac cath and had urgent bypass. After bypass he had respiratory failure, renal failure but eventually pulled through.
I reviewed the chart and all I could thick of was that it was amazing that this guy pulled through. Not to mention that he had consumed so many tax dollars with his disability and medical care! Anyway, after I went through the chart I told them that I though everything was appropriate. They then apoligized to me and said that they meant to call me and I did not have to review it. The patient had the records sent because he is suing the hospital and a drug company claiming it was the heparin that he got in bypass surgery that caused his renal failure and not the fact that he had cardiogenic shock. He is suing for 3 million. I figure he has already sucked up three million dollars of tax money, so I guess with his lawsuit he is hoping to be a real "Steve Austin".
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Wow... talk about tempting fate! What..does he have 9 lives or something?
This stuff must be absolutely crazy making for physicians and administration... but especially for physicians.
Thank God for the good patients you can help and who are appreciative... or even if you can't..they are good people and appreciative.
It must be really hard working in inner city hospitals with the frequency of these cases, etc.
Of course...people are people where ever you go and certain things/behaviors know no boundaries.
Maybe I shouldn't admit this but I am clueless about who Steve Austin is. LOL! It was a movie..right? :)
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