Our Goals
We have three main goals with this website. First, if someone has suffered a serious medical injury (including the death of a loved one), and if the injury truly is the result of medical negligence, then we want to help them obtain fair compensation, should they choose to pursue a claim. We are not on a witch hunt against doctors and hospitals, and we don’t bring claims unless they have substantial merit. But if a case does have substantial merit, then we pursue the case vigorously and aggressively.
Second, we want to help improve patient safety in Washington by building in incentives for healthcare professionals to practice more carefully and to put safer systems in place. Holding healthcare providers responsible for poor medical care is one of the surest ways to improve patient safety. (For a further discussion of how patient safety is improved by holding healthcare providers responsible for poor medical care, click here.) And, when medical errors decrease, the many billions of dollars of losses caused by medical errors is saved. Our fondest hope is that someday we are put out of business because medical errors have dramatically decreased. Unfortunately, however, medical errors are not decreasing. (See Landrigan C, Parry G, Bones C, et al. Temporal trends in rates of patient harm resulting from medical care. 363 New Eng J Med. 2010;363:2124-2134, at p. 2130.)
Third, we want to provide information that is useful to the public. Doctors and hospitals and their insurance companies, being businesses, act largely in their own self-interest, and they have billions of dollars to spend pushing their agenda onto an unsuspecting public.1 We want to provide information to serve as a counterbalance to these powerful business interests.
We hope that you find the information in our website useful.
1 Indeed, from 1998-2013, doctors, hospitals, their trade associations, and insurance companies spent $7.7 billion on lobbying efforts. (See Influence and Lobbying – Top Industries – All years (1998-2013). OpenSecrets.org website (last known to be available at <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&indexType=i>).) Because each one billion is 1,000 times bigger than one million, this means that they spent 7,700 million dollars. In just 2013 alone, doctors, hospitals, their trade associations, and insurance companies spent $623 million. (See Influence and Lobbying – Top Industries – 2013. OpenSecrets.org website (last known to be available at <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2013&indexType=i>).) For comparison, in 2013, lawyers and law firms spent just 2% of that amount, and part of that represented lobbying efforts of big business law firms (presumably on behalf of their big business clients, like hospitals, insurance companies, etc.). (See Annual Lobbying on Lawyers and Law Firms – 2013. OpenSecrets.org website (last known to be available at <http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=K01>).)