Well, all the doctor is admitting is that the plaintiff received some medical procedures. There’s nothing inherently wrong in performing medical procedures. It’s the “performing it against somebody’s will” part that is wrong (and that the doctor is denying, and demanding proof of). So yes, he’s an asshole, but he appears to be an asshole who thinks he has proof that he performed those medical procedures with the patient’s consent. I wonder if the police coerced him into signing a consent form.
That’s not an excuse to close down a Hospital. GRMC services a rural part of New Mexico, which itself is a rural part of the United States. If necessary, replace the staff that were involved in the decision to render these procedures. But shutting down the hospital is salting the land.
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You assume that the other patients at GRMC are receiving proper care. The crime indicates a failure at the administrative level and the lawsuit is a good way of correcting this.
Medical care is a commodity business and even if a judgement against were to shut GRMC down, someone else would open it back up in that location. The good doctors will have no problem finding employment. Patients will continue to receive (perhaps better) treatment.
Add to this the usual “god factor” in doctor psychology (and yes, I count myself among the afflicted), and it makes no sense that any doctor with a scrap of ethics would comply with orders like these from police without a paper trail of warrants, judges orders etc… for the medical record, and even then I have to suspect that most doctors would figure a way out of it (even with valid legal orders) if they weren’t ethically ok with it.
And what I mean by “god factor” is that there is no higher authority than me in reference to the medicine practiced on one of my patients. I’m the one fundamentally responsible, it’s my hard earned license on the line, and consequently, I’m the one with veto power over what does and doesn’t happen (given pre-existing patient consent etc…). Another Dr., a specialist in the field, the damn hospital director could instruct me to do something, and if I think they’re wrong, it’s not happening while I’m the primary on the case.
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Maybe, maybe not. Depends on who owns the hospital and hires the staff and administration. The parent company might be just as corrupt and a total closure could be the best option for the community. But that’s my point. You didn’t answer my question. You just assumed that closing the hospital is bad. When it might be, it might not be. More facts would help in the ascertainment, rather than taking a knee-jerk response one way or the other.
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I’m sorry, what was the knee-jerk reaction? Was it closing the hospital, or my questioning the assertion that the hospital should be closed.
We don’t have the facts on how this hospital is being run. None of us do, and I work with a practice that contracts with GRMC. What I can assert is that this hospital serves a third of the entire state of New Mexico. I’m asking for people to not pass judgement on an entire third of my birth state by shutting down a vital resource.
I am NOT defending the actions of these police officers and these doctors. I believe I feel just a little more ire towards them right now than most people on this BBS. But please don’t assume the hospital is to blame for the actions of a few. This isn’t Wall Street, this is healthcare. Not a mere commodity, a vital utility.
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1.6M… think of all the drugs you could buy with that money!
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Sedation for a colonoscopy (if they even went that far up there) is not general anæsthesia.
(Edit: I see now that they did do a full colonoscopy, presumably on the suspicion that Eckert was a condoms-full-of-coke-swallowing drug mule.)
I can’t imagine their brass being happy about them costing the department a load of money and giving it a PR black eye to boot. Fucking up like that is a good way to get yourself assigned to a dusty file storage room in the HQ basement for the remainder of your career.
The doctor at the first emergency room they took him to refused to torture him, so they went on to Gila Regional Medical Center to do the dirty work.
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I hope they do. And, I am sad thinking that the only thing standing between (some) U.S. doctors and torture* is fear of being caught and punished.
*I see the procedures performed as torturous and humiliating and not concerned with the patient’s well-being.
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If local activists decided to post flyers of the doctor’s name and photo along with the procedures performed in the doctor’s hospital, church, neighborhood coffee shops, his children’s school, I would not blame them.
This is a tactic which (I believe Serbian) activists used to out policemen who beat/tortured.
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Pretty harmless for something that would get the average Joe without a badge into prison for several years.
That’s a legal answer to a claim. You can’t say you didn’t know you did something without perjuring yourself. In a civil action, there are no fifth amendment protections. You are compelled to make some kind of an answer. If I were his lawyer, and I am not a lawyer, I wouldn’t let him admit to anything that he doesn’t have to. This is especially the case when most civil and even criminal complaints don’t necessarily hold all the details. A big part of pretrial civil practice is collecting evidence and deposing witnesses. This is where it becomes clear exactly what is being alleged.
There isn’t anything bizarre about it. It’s pretty typical.
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I had a contracts professor who was a practicing lawyer who did a lot of work with medical licensing and doctors in general. We asked how often doctors take his advice. His response was, “Are you kidding? Not nearly as much as they should. The first class doctors take in medical school is GOD101. Of course, I get paid the same whether they take my advice or not. :D”
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Well yeah, of course prison would be the preferable punishment (by civilized society’s reckoning, not the cop’s) but it’s not as if a big financial hit is zero impetus to rethink departmental policy and training. The police chief isn’t sitting back chuckling about this, going “it’s only taxpayer money, plenty more where that came from.” If there’s a persistent pattern of expensive proceedings due to police misbehavior, the taxpayers, town council, and mayor are going to get fed up with this jerkoff department throwing money away and make some changes.
(…ideally. For some reason this does not apply to Maricopa County.)
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The rapists who were involved need to be publicly identified. Like all sex offenders their careers should be crushed. to Each of these perverts needs to pay a heavy personal toll for their crime. I hope it doesn’t result in the medical facilities being closed but regardless these twisted bastards need to pay a heavy price for the gang rape they committed.
I wonder if a day goes by that the man doesn’t remember his assault. I wonder if he is seized by fear every time he see’s a cop.
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The cops responsible should certainly be crushed like insects; but I’d say that the mere unreliability of medical staff who will directly contravene medical ethics under the slightest pressure (much less their contravention of medical ethics) would make the permanent removal of the medical types involved from the profession a very good idea.
Even aside from any ethical consideration, somebody who will contravene his patients’ good on the application of external pressure is like a surgeon with shaky hands, just a problem waiting to happen. Would you trust them to represent the patients’ interests against other sources of pressure?
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The war on drugs located inside assholes is going swimmingly, isn’t it?
The fact that there wasn’t any drugs up his ass means that we’re winning the war on drugs.
Remember, if you’ve got nothing to hide in your hide then surely it should be OK for the government inspect your hide for hidden contraband.
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I would take a big chunk of that money and buy drugs to shove up my ass just to spite those cops.
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