Complaint Review: Medical Protection Society - London Internet

This needs to be said.  There is an increasing number of medical professionals in the community who feel the Medical Protection Society, Dental Protection Ltd, and our other such medical indemnity organisations, are engaging in shameful and illegal acts, and are reducing doctors and dentists to common criminals. 

The MPS/ DPL et al are charging us substantial subscriptions that end up effectively being used to line the pockets of medico/ dento-legal advisers and the MPS/ DPL solicitors, as well as being used to fund a comprehensive s system of bribes or incentives, to just about everybody - from personal injury lawyers who simultaneously work as insurance claims assessors/ adjusters - to anyone with tidbits and tip-offs to kill or minimize  potential negligence claims, not only colleagues within the medical profession but also journalists and patient association staff, etc.  It is morally reprehensible that negligence has evolved into a goldmine with so many prepared to adopt such a base and dishonourable on-the- take mentality.

I am all for defending professionals against scurrilous and frivolous claims and for the autonomous regulation of our medical industry.  However, I would also not be alone in thinking that the culture of providing rewards for hounding patients involved with complex or serious malpractice cases is just heartless and wicked profiteering.  Though, admittedly it was some time ago indeed, I do seem to remember taking the Hippocratic Oath and that it still holds meaning for me.

How do we know that certain shady colleagues are not being encouraged by the MPS/ DPL etc themselves to provide poor treatment knowingly, that is to say, to commit dirty deeds, purely to set in motion a system that generates sizeable revenue incurred from the ensuing costly legal and advisory services?  Not to mention all the knock-on profiteering in the form of extortionate fees extracted from patients by expert witnesses and personal injury lawyers salivating after retainer fees.  I suspect, as others do too, that there is chicanery here as there seems to be a pattern developing of late with certain recurring criminal negligence claims that have been covered up. 

Some professionals - I am one of them, do not want to be party to activities based on illegal collusion, denying treatment, devising untruthful records, radiograph manipulation and further abusing patient privacy through taping conversations and using Skype and laptops to record patients secretly.  I have been told by police sergeants that the authenticity of the information contained within radiographs produced by the medical industry in relation to negligence cases have become so questionable, owing to the amounts of digital alteration we commit, the police will no longer accept them as evidence. 

How did it ever come to all this?  The medical profession deemed untrustworthy and known by our peers with standing in the community as perpetrators of fraud?

Instead of all this-CIA-style rubbish, how about we just pay compensation to malpractice patients where it is clearly due?  Lets face it.  The money is going to be wasted either on compensating the patient or gobbled up by MPS/ DPL lawyers and advisers.  The elaborate and usually unlawful schemes that have been devised by this here our mutual trust to make it difficult for injured patients to get due care or compensation, have become a massive rip-off for us, the membership, as well.  Care and proper treatment are what medical professionals are supposed to provide and due compensation to injured patients is what malpractice insurance cover is for.  We do not have to open the floodgates to claims, but neither do we have to blockade the pass pretty much altogether using assorted mercenaries, despotic strategies and criminal acts.

We feel some professionals should indeed not be practicing at all if they are seriously injuring patients, whether through a lack of training or through abuse.  It is as simple as that.  The solution should not be just for them to pay higher subscriptions thereby, padding the wallets of medico and dento-legal advisers, solicitors and barristers even further.  And we do not want to pay our subscriptions to keep them in business. 

Similarly, the medical and dental councils and boards should be a genuine place for the public to address their grievances, not a point for the MPS/ DPL and other indemnifiers and insurers to collect information on hapless patients so they can set in process the mechanisms of collusion and fraud to stop injured patients getting any chance of just compensation.  I would rather see my subscriptions going to pay claims compensation than funding the exorbitant legal costs of medical professionals who have demonstrated questionable medical ability or shown dubious ethics that are indeed a threat, not only to the public, but also to our trade in the long term.

It will not take the public long to work out that it is safer to use medical services in countries where  the MPS/ DPL et al do not yet dominate healthcare provision services or have not taken root in Health departments, government health services, medical boards and health commissions, even if it means going to lesser developed countries.   Patients are already working out it is best to seek out medical professionals in the world that do not have malpractice liability insurance because it is in their real interests and a much safer option for a variety of reasons, not least of them, the hope of gaining some accountability in malpractice compensation cases.

I share the view of many of my colleagues who now feel professional indemnity insurance networks have gone too far, using tyranny and illegal methods to minimise claims and cover up malpractice, and expecting professionals to act above the law.  By doing so, they are taking away our power to care for patients in a decent manner.  The likes of Dental Protection and the Medical Protection Society are robbing medical professionals, as well as patients of their rights.  This is not something I want to work long hours to subsidise.

Does anybody else have anything to add?