By Eulalee Thompson, Staff Reporter 
Many of Jamaica's doctors are
practising without malpractice
insurance and the hospitals allow this - Dr. Albert Lockhart, Medical Association of Jamaica.
PENDING IN our courts is a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Bustamante Hospital for Children and its senior medical officer, Dr. Sonia Thomas. The hospital and Dr. Thomas are facing the lawsuit from Anthony and Naedia Williams, parents of Tonika Williams, whom they allege went blind as a result of the failure of medical personnel to administer or recommend the testing of the baby's eyes, born premature (and placed in oxygen).
The claim is that eye tests should be routine and are usually mandatory for premature babies. In her filed defence, Dr. Thomas reportedly said that she had no responsibility for the medical care and treatment of Tonika while she was a patient at the Government
hospital.
This is one case of alleged malpractice which has made it to the courts using medical experts from overseas. Unearthing information on the extent of medical mistakes, malpractice and negligence in local hospitals and private medical practices, is really an exercise in futility. A visit to the dentist for teeth extractions would be a more pleasant way to pass the time.
Is it that local medical practice is so safe that errors are not made or nobody bothers to collect the data? The general indication in the legal fraternity is that many citizens are not consulting lawyers in suspected cases of negligence or malpractice. It is also generally felt in the wider community that local doctors cover for each other making lawsuits more tedious.
Anyway, judging by more easily available data from North America, medical malpractice and its effects on patients are fairly extensive. Based on two large studies, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine (IOM), published a report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System that estimates that between 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year not from the medical conditions for which they checked into the hospital, but from preventable medical errors. A medical error in this case could mean that, for example, a health-care provider chose an inappropriate method of care or chose the right course of care but carried it out incorrectly.
The report also indicates that medical errors are the eighth leading cause of death among Americans, with error-caused deaths each year in hospitals alone exceeding those from motor vehicle accidents (43,458), breast cancer (42,297) or AIDS (16,516).
The IOM estimates also that preventable medication errors (giving the right drug, in the right dose, to the right patient, at the right time) result in more than 7,000 deaths each year in hospitals alone, and tens of thousands more in outpatient facilities.
Malpractice insurance premiums are now skyrocketing in the U.S. sending some doctors out of business and others to take industrial action. Committees in the U.S. senate are now interested in a bill to cap damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. Local health personnel have also been feeling the pinch of skyrocketing insurance fee from its United Kingdom insurers, Medical Protection Society (MPS), and so last year the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ) instituted its own insurance fund, chaired by Dr. Albert Lockhart.
Contemplating the goings-in in the U.S. and the increasingly litigious Jamaican society, Dr. Lockhart admitted that malpractice coverage here is far too low.
"Unfortunately lots of doctors practise in Jamaica without insurance and the hospitals allow doctors to practise without insurance. Patients are not covered and the doctors are not covered," he said.
Dr. Errol Daley, MAJ's president said that 'malpractice insurance' is not mandatory here perhaps because the incidence of litigation here is low and further the incidence of successful litigation is low. He pointed out that many frivolous lawsuits are filed in the U.S. and that fewer than one-half of them are pursued and of those pursued fewer than one-half of them are settled.
"There is a distinction to be made between mal-occurrence recognised occurrences of all procedures and medical malpractice when the standard of care is compromised," he stressed.
