Not that long ago, most medical information was pretty hard to get and often even more difficult to decipher. Physicians were the gatekeepers of such information and even between them it was often hard to come by. For medical malpractice lawyers here in Phoenix, Arizona, this usually meant endless trips to the county medical library and long hours once there to learn about the issues in their potential cases or the need to retain expensive experts just to get a basic understanding of what was going on. I was lucky because when I first started practicing law, one of the lawyers at my firm was also a physician. We could figure things out a lot faster than most law firms and we able to focus our time on the cases we felt were worth pursuing. Still, the information was hard to come by and took a long time to get.
Things were even worse for patients, who had virtually no access to health care information and had to blindly trust that their physician was making the right call.
THE INTERNET HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING
Now, a patient who receives a diagnosis often can understand his or her condition better than the diagnosing physician in less than a day. Patients can engage with their healthcare providers when something is wrong in a more sophisticated way that can lead to better care and improved outcomes. Physician have better access to the most current information – studies, literature, diagnostic criteria, special expertise – that improves their ability to diagnose and treat patients. And, yes, lawyers can better understand the medicine involved in their cases more quickly. This improves their ability to know which cases have merit and which don’t, helps clients know when a bad outcome was no one’s fault, and helps ensure that only cases with merit are litigated.
One of the most important events in a medical malpractice case is the deposition of an opposing expert, who is often a physician. The unprecedented access to medical information that the internet provides levels the playing field by minimizing and often eliminating the advantage such experts once had. Of course, it also levels the litigation playing field between lawyers who can learn what they need to know cheaply and quickly, without needing to practice with a lawyer who is also a physician. The internet also has improved the practice of law by helping lawyers understand out of the gate how complex and difficult medical negligence cases generally are before they get in over their heads or take on a case they probably shouldn’t have.
If you are reading this blog, you almost certainly know how easy it is to access and assess the quality of all kinds of information, including medical information. Nonetheless, here is a link to a site which provides an excellent aggregation of medical websites which I think is quite useful whether you are a patient, a lawyer, a healthcare provider, or simply curious.
Long live the internets.
