Trial of King of Pop’s doc has lessons for the profession
LOS ANGELES – Watching Conrad Murray on trial for allegedly unintentionally killing pop star Michael Jackson allows us to indulge in voyeurism, but some also regard the trial as presenting an allegory of sorts, that has particular significance for doctors.
The trial offers different meanings depending on perspective but all have one thing in common: Doctors no longer can count on being considered inviolable.
“Doctors used to be considered sacrosanct,” said William Kickham, a Boston-based attorney. “Let’s face it. Anyone who could see inside your body was considered almost priestly and the idea of holding someone legally accountable for a mistake was considered almost unthinkable, perhaps 40 or 50 years ago. But in the past 30 to 25 years, that has changed.”
The social compact between doctors and patients and doctors and the media that shielded them to some extent, is gone, said Kickham. That means doctors, whether they’re treating high-profile patients or not, are under increased scrutiny.
That erosion of the social compact coupled with struggling to handle reduced reimbursements and more regulations leads to disillusionment, which poses dangers in itself, said Carole Lieberman, MD, a Beverly Hills-based media psychiatrist.
“These conditions that doctors are facing are causing them consciously or unconsciously to cut corners and that’s where mistakes happen,” she said. “As soon as you let the patient be the boss, be the doctor, then that’s when things fall apart. It is a conflict but you have to decide where your ethical boundaries are.”
“Doctors must remember that there are very strict standards that guide their profession both ethically and under the law,” said Christopher Brown, an associate attorney at Florida-based, the Health Law Firm. “It would be prudent for physicians to use Dr. Murray's story as a lesson for what can happen when you operate outside your training and when you place your patient's requests over what may be medically appropriate or necessary.”
“While it is the physician’s job to be a confidant and an advisor to his or her patients, it is also that physician’s duty to be the patient’s caretaker, and to place that individual’s health and safety above all else,” Brown continued. “A physician who forgets this duty, and allows a patient to adversely control his or her own healthcare, can face discipline from his or her respective state’s licensing board, a potential malpractice action, or as in Dr. Murray's case, even criminal charges.”
If doctors take away anything from Murray’s trial it should be that the increased scrutiny coupled with the eroded social compact means doctors may find themselves in criminal courts rather than in civil ones.
“… with the reduction in the availability of civil remedies in malpractice cases, tort reform, lower required medical malpractice insurance limits and greater statutory bars to bringing civil suits against physicians, I have observed an increase in criminal prosecutions of physicians as well as increased disciplinary actions brought by state and federal regulators,” said George Indest III, founder of the Health Law Firm. “In the past, physicians were given a great deal of deference and were usually afforded the benefit of the doubt when their medical judgment was involved. This is not so prevalent today.”
“It’s always a fine line to draw what’s negligent,” said Larry Feldman, special counsel, litigation, Kaye Sholer, a global legal services company. (In 1993, Feldman represented a boy who accused Michael Jackson of child molestation.)
“What we’ve seen now in this case, what we’ve seen in the Anna Nicole Smith case, is a criminal system getting involved in the issues that I would think 10 years ago were just civil issues,” Feldman said.
“There’s no insurance coverage that’s going to protect doctors from these criminal charges.”