Recent news coverage of military medical mistakes made at veteran’s hospitals and other clinics has the public wondering if our service members are receiving less than adequate medical care. One young man’s sad story of participating in physically exerting activities after failing medical tests and having a known genetic condition that can lead to sudden death highlights this very issue.
In spite of this, the Air Force claimed that no military medical mistakes were made, and his family still does not have any answers.
No Accountability in Military Medical System
While thousands of serious mistakes happen at hospitals every year, sadly, service members are in a particular predicament in that they have less (or, arguably, no) power to hold the system accountable. They also cannot get care elsewhere if are concerned that what is being provided is substandard. Only starting in late 2013 did the Pentagon allow these service members to file complaints if they are harmed or killed in these hospitals and clinics. Still, any investigations are kept confidential as part of a system that, literally, has no transparency.
Sadly, a lack of reporting and transparency, of course, results in less prevention. Some of the military’s largest hospitals have had long-standing issues that never seem to get resolved; for example, one that had a rate of surgical infections 77 percent higher than expected. And many of them seem to be skirting around conducting the mandatory safety investigations after something does go wrong.
While, for years, officials have held that federal confidentiality law is absolutely necessary to avoid malpractice lawsuits, in fact, a program conducted by the University of Michigan Health System is finding that, in general, the more doctors and medical personnel that report, discuss, and apologize for mistakes, the fewer malpractice suits there are.
Different Standards for Doctors
In addition, the medical professionals that work within the military medical system are also held to different standards: instead of a national database being kept to track mistakes, databases tend to be internally kept, and only if and when a service member is disabled or dies as a result of the professional, resulting in very little overall reporting. They’ve also been shown to fail to conduct safety investigations, as mandated by the Defense Department when there is serious harm or death.
Mistakes made at some of these facilities seem to indicate that procedures that typically carry very low risk at most hospitals in the U.S. carry higher risks if performed at military medical centers. In the midst of receiving no answers other than serious harms and deaths being a total mystery, specialists that reviewed records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act were able to, in some instances, identify exactly what happened, indicating mistakes made by the doctors themselves versus random mysterious cases of death.
Pressure
Many military members have noted that the culture frowns down upon those who complain or question medical determinations. In spite of obvious, documented mistakes that have or could have cost these military members their lives, the facilities seem to constantly maintain that no mistakes have been made. For example, between 2003 and 2013, the Army did not report a single clinician for breaching medical standards, even when service members were left disabled as a result of their actions.
Malpractice Representation in Louisiana
Justice for medical malpractice should not hinge on whether you are an active duty service member or a civilian. A violation of the appropriate standard of medical care which results in injury or death should be reported, transparent, and carry consequences. If you are a loved one has been harmed by a doctor or hospital, speak with our medical malpractice attorneys at Harrell & Nowak today.