Governor Kasich campaigned to 'fix' the problem of bad physicians - for WOMEN and MEN colleague physicians and patients dealing with the problems - and the problem of perpetually bad Medical Board Members in Ohio. So far he has done nothing except to make things worse - blaming everything on the pill-mill physicians - the least of the problem. Pill-mill physicians are only picking up the pieces of the bad medical care in Ohio - giving pain meds for the negligence.
Ohio is one of the last two states (Ohio, Texas) to believe that 'confidential' physician complaints is the way to go at the state level - to improve medical care & get physician 'disciplines.' But physicians can't defend themselves or improve bad care standards that way - there's no non-punitive way to discuss things that are just part of 'life' in medicine = the ongoing changing of standards and care.
It is a 'reign of terror,' a mess, that is making medical care worse in Ohio. Reforms have been needed for at least 2 decades - which the state legislature knows but refuses to do anything about. Medical mistakes are lied about instead of being non-punitively discussed and the care improved. It doesn't make the malpractice suits worse, the damages are in fact less. And there is a 'window of opportunity,' as many medical mistakes can be corrected early on, for the physicians to redeem themselves in the eyes of the patients. Most non-terminal medical mistakes can be corrected within a time frame - but that time frame is never allowed in Ohio because everyone starts immediately lying and accusing the patient of being 'crazy.' Fractures become two decade cases at the State Medical Board, as the orthopedics didn't have to refer after unanticipated results.
If you don't lie about what is going on, then Anita Steinbergh DO & other Board Members will make sure you are ordered to 5-10 psychiatric evaluations so that you not mention the problems - so that the emotional trauma will make you stutter forever after. She's a Board Member for the last 20 years who, just doesn't want to hear the problems.
No other State except maybe Texas, believes that looking the other way for medical mistakes - not mentioning the 'elephant in the room - will solve the problem. It means better education, better checklists, better training to recognize medical mistakes and refer - the answer isn't to let the patient die or not tell the patient - or 'confidential' physician complaints.
The American College of Physicians, in their latest Board preparation materials, has the first question beng when to tell the patient of a medical mistake. The answer: ASAP regardless of who's responsible, why it happened, the age of the patient, or the degrees of the patient (MD patients deserve to know the mistakes as well as the non-MD patients).
This goes for 'unanticipated' results - the orthopedic shouldn't just run away from the 'fracture that won't cast' (certain orthopedics in Ohio have a lot of these) to shop for polo ponies and party for two weeks, or the oncologist get drunk as the patient slips into unconsciousness from the anti-metabolite drug effects being too much, or the Chief of Medicine being on a perpetual bender - not answering his phone. The physicians have to follow the care, acknowledge the mistakes & unanticipated results, be sober while on call, and have notes on the chart documenting the actions taken - but not in Ohio where the notations stop at the labs going south, and the attending being unreachable on the polo field or 'on horse.'
Male physicians have a better chance with this 'confidential' system, because the male MDs in Ohio seem to get their confidential complaint files regardless of State Law. The law is broken daily on a sex/gender basis - and no one says anything about this being not EOE. And the State Medical Board of Ohio freely admits this, and says it is their prerogative to give confidential complaints to whoever they want - to unconfidential them for whole hospitals & communities - and yet to expect the woman MD to defend herself 'confidentially' - without knowing the issues or the accusers. And this isn't' working - you can't sign a resolution for anything 'confidential' - because legally you don't know what you are signing.
The 'confidential' becomes a gateway into the physician's whole life and medical history - to things totally not relevant to that physician's ability to practice medicine - and cases go on for decades at taxpayer expense when the issues had nothing to do with that physician's care of patients. Anita Steinbergh DO wants to know all the medical details of her women competitor's life - not for good reasons - as the issues are always changed, ie the complaint. It's a way to get rid of the competition legally, to get back at the medical school classmate who studied, to keep the woman MD from ever having a family or child when you want your children to succeed (the soccer MD moms & dads of Ohio are on the State Medical Board).
Women MDs are especially vulnerable as male MDs can make sexual advances into licensure & career benefits - confidentially of course. And the State Medical Board admits that certain male MDs are philanderers, yet allows them to complain of women MDs who euphemistically 'didn't sent them enough referral patients.' C'mon = even a second grader would see through that nonsense, but the State Medical Board of Ohio and Governor Kasich pretend not to.
The new excuse for not agreeing to sex is to say that the woman physician didn't send the male MD enough referral patients; wouldn't work with him and you have to be able to work with (have sex with in the new liturgy translation) every physician in Ohio or no license. If you won't refer to Dr. Not-so-nice, then you won't get your license back. So no sex - no license - and the Governor is going along - pretending to be Christian - formerly Catholic. And the Catholic MD girls are in trouble in Ohio; Dr. Nice trained at Loyola and got used to Catholic girls being 'easy,' available, and it had nothing to do with patient care. Loyola University Medical School must be a den of iniquity for non-Catholic students.
Any woman physician complaining of bad care in Ohio, has their license taken 'confidentially' for objecting 'too much' to 'admittedly bad care.' You never KNOW who complained about you, or what the complaint was about ie the issues, to defend things in a timely & appropriate manner. Saying that things are just 'mediocre' means you are going against the physician group in Ohio; to complain is being 'paranoid' that medical care isn't always perfect - and the fact is that there has to be a way to improve care standards and practices on an ongoing basis - care isn't perfect in Ohio or anywhere else. And Ohio seems to have some of the most glamorous real estate and buildings for hospital facilities (Ahuja), with literal talking-heads running and practicing in them. In the Eastern USA, Massachusetts & Rhode Island, the buildings are not award-winning, the roads are terrible, but the care is more intelligent in a dump.
Ohio needs to improve the practices at the State Medical Board of Ohio, so that women physicians aren't getting care that would be 'malpractice' in any other state, and having to lose their medical careers saying something to save themselves. Women MDs in Ohio need to be able to disagree as much as the fictional network woman MDs - to save a wrist fracture, to diagnose a bone or tumor problem, to improve the patient care and prognoses in Ohio - which are dismal for women patients and women-physician patients as we are not even allowed blood work. Psychiatry is the answer when medical care goofs - a diagnosis that the woman does not have, but has to have to protect the liability of the male MD. Cases at the State Medical Board of Ohio are about 'letting the statute of limitations expire.' Mr. Whitehouse has that line down.
The State Medical Board of Ohio regularly takes women MD licenses, when the men have goofed by not even ordering the blood work, and says that the women MDs need no blood work. That is a current policy of Mr. Richard Whitehouse, as it was of Tom Dilling as the Executive Medical Director. The lawyers in charge of the State Medical Board of Ohio have no common sense, no interest or training in medical anything, and no ethics. They are women attorneys - that Mr. Whitehouse surrounds himself with - that make fun of women MDs for having to say something - because they are too young to have had many medical problems. The most inexperienced, most immature women attorneys are at the State Medical Board of Ohio - they shop.
Network television is ahead of Ohio in this aspect - of allowing women MDs a voice. A Gifted Man has a woman physician - Kate Sykora MD (Family Physician) - who can stand-up to Patrick Wilson's arrogant Michael Holt MD and get her point across - to get blood tests ordered or save a uterus in a 16-year old. She's picks him up off from the parking lot snow when he collapses - and gets his thanks - and she's a good-looker with a brain. In Ohio a Kate Sykora MD character, played by Rachelle Lefevre on the series, would be without a medical license. Yet woman are trained to be able to interface with men in medical school, to disagree in care conferences but not afterwards; afterwards we are supposed to be 'Yes' women - little more than nurses with fancy degrees and over-educated uteruses.
That mistakes occur in medicine is a FACT. That they occur especially to women is another fact. That women MDs, trying to improve care for themselves and other patients, will have to complain about some of the things going on in Ohio in January 2012 is a no-brainer. And that the State Medical Board is unrepresentative of the average physician, or medical training, is another problem - we have a podiatrist President of the State Medical Board, a woman DO who couldn't do MD training or get into Medical School (EOE in action), a MD ob-gyn who specializes in 3rd trimester abortion neonatal brain suction procedures, and an assortment of other medical professional misfits. No one gets onto the State Medical Board in Ohio by their credentials or excellence in clinical medicine - they haven't a clue about that form of medicine - it's about gender and diversity.