Viability of lawsuit against former doctor

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have been under the care of my psyiatrist for more than 10 years. In addition to prescribing me tramadol for chronic pain due to rotator cuff damage, he prescribes me the antidepressant I have been on for more than 15 years (zoloft).

I was on a twice/yearly maintenance schedule for appointments, so I would often just call for prescription refills since I wasn’t on schedule to see him yet. I never had any issues getting these meds refilled.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when I called for refills (and I called a week before I actually ran out of meds, because sometimes it takes a few days to be finalized).

I talked to a receptionist and left a message for the doc. I was told it would be taken care of within 48 hours. Well 48 hours pass and my meds had not been called in to my pharmacy. So I call the doc’s office first thing the next morning and explained the situation and that it was getting close to emergency status (I was already out of my zoloft and only had couple days left of my tramadol). I was told that I would be contacted later that day when the doc was in.

Well you can probably see by now that I never got that call.The first thing next morning I called the office and was told, very abruptly, that the doc was no longer working there anymore. ?!

I explained that I was being adversely affected by not having my meds and if I didn’t get my tramadol script in the next day, I would be put in withdrawal and be forced to go to the ER. At this point, they had NOTHING to offer me, not even another doc who could cover for my (apparently former) doctor.

This infuriated me. How could a medical professional be so neglectful? This was a doctor who specialized in spinal cord injury and had numerous patients who depended on him for psychotropic medications that could not be stopped cold turkey. And his office, which was part of a larger network (university-based) had no answer as to what I was supposed to do.

I was absolutely floored by this incompetence and neglect, made worse by the callousness with which it was communicated. By this point, I had already been forced to go to the ER. However, the ER was only giving me 1 day worth of meds.

All I could do was keep trying my doctors office and hope for a positive turn. I managed to get thru to the nurse who had worked with my specific doc for years. She was able to direct me to another doctor in the network who was covering for some of my doc’s patients. However, predictably, this doctor would not phone in my scripts, I had to actually be seen first.

I was able to get an appointment for Monday of the next week (at this point it was Friday). But that left me with the entire weekend to fend for myself. I was already REALLY suffering from stopping my zoloft abruptly AND I was basically sick from tramadol withdrawal as well. Suffice to say I was in bad shape.

I managed to get thru the weekend but I still had to drive 90min to get to this appointment. I get in and see the doc, who had no problem writing scripts that I had been on continuously for years but would only write them for one fill, no refills. It was on ME to find an adequate replacement before the scripts ran out.

Well at this point i was just relieved to finally have my meds. I drive back home and drop off the scripts to my pharmacy. Minutes after I get home, I get a call from my pharmacy. They were unable to fill them because not only did the doctor not sign any of the scripts, the phone number on the forms was the WRONG NUMBER! WTF.

So after yet another day of deprivation, I had to call the office to get this straightened out. Well I won’t bore anyone with the mundane details but I went another 2 days before I get decent news. “Decent” but not great, due to the fact that I had to make that fucking hour and a half drive to pick up the physical copies of the script in person (for some reason the doc wasnt comfortable phoning them in).

Today was the day I drove back to get my scripts. Being sick as fuck, I didn’t examine the details on the scripts, I just grabbed them and got the fuck outta there. That turned out to be a mistake.

It wasn’t until I get my scripts filled that I discover that the doc hadn’t written the scripts accurately. Even though I had had vocal confirmation from the doc herself as to the specific amounts of both scripts, they actually had both been written as once-a-day meds. DESPITE the fact that both are twice-a-day meds.

So I am going to be forced to make this fucking drive AGAIN tomorrow. I am fucking disgusted with all of this and the ultimate blame goes to my former doctor for displaying such blatant neglect by simply quitting out of the blue. He left all of his patients hanging and forced to take it upon themselves to find relief.

What I want to know is, just based on what is written here, do i have any sort of ground to file a lawsuit? Against either the doctor or the network that he was part of. To me, who is basically ignorant of the legal possibilities here, this seems like blatant patient neglect. I know none of you are my lawyers, I just want the opinions of others who may be more well-versed in what my potential option are.

2

What damages are you attempting to recover?

3

Pain and suffering. I did everything I could as an involved, proactive patient. Its not so much an attempt to get paid as much as it is a way to ensure some level of accountability.

I still have not received the slightest explanation of what happened. His office apparently knows nothing except he’s gone.

4

Given the knowledge of what I went thru, I have to imagine that there are other patients who have been much more negatively impacted by this. As far as being a patient with a spinal cord injury, I am about as simple and problem free as it gets. And even as simple as my case is, I still really suffered.

5

Jeezus - no advice for you, just sympathy. What an unbelievably crappy thing to have to endure.

6

Sorry for what is going on, and I hope you can find someone good.

As far as a lawsuit goes, IANAL, so I don’t know.
It might matter what actually happened to your doctor. He may have been arrested or even worse. If it wasn’t the doctors fault I don’t know if that affects your case or not. IME doctors don’t* usually* just disappear. I have known several that were arrested and several that committed suicide. Those doctors didn’t make arrangements ahead of time.
But the majority of doctors are pretty careful with their practices. It is the number one financial investment in their lives and careers.

7

I was told that his office just received an email (from the doc) informing them that he was no longer a part of the network. Today I was told that he plans to open a private practice. NO details whatsoever but from that little nugget of info it seems that he isn’t in legal trouble (but I could be wrong). I do know he had dealt with a personal medical issue a couple years ago that caused him to take a few months off. In that instance, however, he clearly communicated this to his office and took steps to have another doc in place to see his patients.

8

I was gonna say maybe he retired, but apparently that’s not true. One of my doctors changed his affiliation with the clinic he was in. We were notified to either use another doc in that clinic or call and have our records moved to the new clinic. I stayed in the original clinic, for reasons. That was incredibly rude not to let regular patients know of the change. I 'll bet there is more to this story yet to come. I say bring a lawsuit, IANAL but I see a case here.

9

Yeah the whole “starting his own practice” thing really just brought up more questions than it answered. If he just quit to start a private practice, he could have voiced his plans well in advance and given ample time to put another doctor in place. Instead he just left everything in a hot mess and put all his patients in a desperate situation where they had to fend for themselves. I’ve never even heard of a situation like this before. I can’t imagine a more blatant example of patient neglect and unprofessional behavior. I feel like if a doctor can’t be sued for this, what on earth COULD they be sued for? Neglect resulting in death?!

10

It sounds like it might be a case of abandonment.

*The Elements of Patient Abandonment

Let’s start by pointing out that whether or not patient abandonment has occurred is a very fact-specific issue, and a doctor’s potential legal liability can vary from state to state. Having said that, there are certain common elements among patient abandonment cases:
First, the doctor-patient relationship must be established. This means that the physician must have agreed to treat the patient, and treatment must be underway.
Second, the abandonment must take place when the patient is still in need of medical attention – this is known as a “critical stage” of the treatment process.
Third, the abandonment must have taken place so abruptly that the patient did not have enough time or resources to find a suitable replacement physician to take over treatment.
Finally, the patient must suffer an injury as a direct result of the patient abandonment.*

11

That is unusual. Don’t know what to make of that. Could be anything from a personal problem to a legal issue or just a disagreement with the network.

Still, not professional.

Once again, sorry for the problems this is causing you. It sucks to get comfortable with a provider and have things under relative control and then … chaos.

12

Thank you! This is exactly the type of info I was hoping for. I realize that this is just a very general outline and that the specifics of my case could mitigate the outcome. But I just wanted to get a sense of whether i have a leg to stand on, legally speaking (pun also intended fwiw). :sunglasses:

13

Let me add that by having another doctor in the practice see you, they can likely avoid being charged with abandonment. Usually, the doctor needs to advise you 30 days in advance or provide a means for you to get care for 30 days in order to give you time to find a new doctor. If they saw you and gave you medication for 30 days, they can argue that they did give you adequate time to find an alternative physician. However, if the doctor is in a specialty where it is difficult to find an alternative who can see you within 30 days, then they may have a stricter standard of care. I am assuming that your doctor is a physiatrist and he is obligated to arrange coverage until you have a reasonable opportunity to establish care with another physiatrist.

14

Psychobunny’s cite looks like it fits you to a tee.

Edit; You guys type too fast.

When the nurse found the other Dr. to see you was she working in an official capacity? That might lessen your standing.

15

All I got from the nurse is a name and a phone nuber. It wasnt even in the same city and it was completely up to me to contact them, explain the situation effectively and schedule an appointment. If that is what frees them of liability it’s a sad state of affairs. I didn’t even get this information until I had already suffered pretty intense consequences (ER visits due to opiod- withdrawal and the effects of stopping my ssri abruptly without proper titration).

16

I forgot to mention that this was not even a psyiatrist. The doctor I ended up seeing was a freaking pain management specialist with no experience treating patients with spinal cord injuries whatsoever (fwiw).

17

There’s not enough clear and measurable damages for you to win a suit. The doctor is going to be protected by some of the best attorneys available through his medical malpractice insurance company.

The fault here is not this doctor, it’s the system itself. There was no system wide electronic medical record of your treatment for the last decade - if there were, the ER doctors could have simply seen you weren’t getting your meds and fixed the issue. But since they only had your word to go on, and so they didn’t do much.

And the system isn’t training enough new doctors - due to collusion by a guild representing doctors to limit the training slots instead of providing medical education to anyone who can pass the exams - so all these offices were jammed and busy.

Similarly, since there are far more patients demanding care than providers to see them, this is why you got treated that way when you called in - those clinics and offices are jammed with traffic. They also have no incentive to do much, they are flooded with money as it is.

I wonder if you could have hopped on a plane to India or somewhere and gotten your issue handled sooner.

18

He may be a psyiatrist - I didn’t know what a psyiatrist was when I read your post and so I looked it up. Apparently, specialists in physical medicine and rehabilitation ( another name for psyiatrist) can subspecialize in pain medicine.

19

Also I wonder if they were treating him like a drug-seeker. Our medical care system is really, really screwed up. Legitimate patients like Ambivalid need some kind of recourse when mistakes like this happen.

20

I agree with this. Despite what you might hear in the popular media, suing doctors is hard, expensive, and usually a losing proposition. I wouldn’t do it unless there were substantial (7 figure) damages.

While our OP may “have a suit,” I would advise (not your lawyer, etc) against it. I would write a few letters to the former clinic and cc the doctor who left, outlining what you have posted here. Little good will come of it, but it can’t hurt.