Did you know you were paying half the legal costs of defending B.C. physicians against malpractice lawsuits? Or that you were also on the hook for a significant chunk of whatever damages might be awarded against them?
In effect, patients who sue doctors are paying both their own legal costs and some of the physician’s bills, as well. This creates a David and Goliath situation, and unlike David, court statistics show the patient usually loses.
The agency that defends doctors is called the Canadian Medical Protective Association. As of 2015, it had amassed a war chest of $3.6 billion to protect physicians across the country from complaints brought by you and me.
In B.C., the association is funded through an agreement between the provincial government and Doctors of B.C. — the advocacy body for physicians. In the current year, the subsidy amounted to $45.9 million.
Some caution is needed here. There is a public interest in sheltering physicians from overly litigious patients.
We’re already pitifully short of GPs and specialists in some areas of medicine. Encumbering physicians with ruinously high legal bills won’t help.
But that is not the end of the story. The CMPA also defends physicians when they are investigated by their own professional body, the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons. As before, the taxpayers pay half the cost of this “service.”
That makes no sense. First, why should we cough up when doctors are investigated by their peers for professional misconduct? Isn’t that a purely internal matter?
Second, and perhaps not unrelated, the association, with its massive war chest, can out-lawyer the college with ease.
Whose interest does this serve?
Moving on, it turns out the CMPA, in certain circumstances, defends physicians facing criminal charges related to their work. There are some cases the agency will not take on.
But where is the public interest in paying any part of these legal bills? Criminal charges aren’t brought by litigious patients, but by Crown prosecutors. They’re extremely rare, meaning they represent no threat to the profession as a whole.
There are other question marks, as well. A disturbing event two weeks ago raised serious concerns about the value system of the association.
A Vancouver Island couple, Ernie and Kay Sievewright, were approved for assisted suicide. They had been married for 55 years, and both were 76.
They were also in poor and deteriorating health. Kay suffered from MS, Ernie from spinal stenosis and progressive heart and kidney failure. The physicians in charge of their care were satisfied that the criteria for assisted suicide had been met in each case.
Understandably, the couple wished to die together. Neither wanted to go through the trauma of watching the other die first.
But the CMPA weighed in with a piece of legalese that defied reason or morality. Basically, the objection was that if a couple elect to die together, the question arises whether one pressured the other.
On that basis, the Sievewrights’ wish was not granted. They were forced to die separately, four days apart.
This is visible nonsense. You could raise the same concern about any assisted-suicide case. For example, did adult children, anticipating an inheritance, bring pressure?
Here is the real issue. The CMPA is indeed there to defend doctors.
But as an organization generously supported by taxpayers, that should not be its sole concern. We need to know that patient rights, and the broader public interest, are also part of the picture.
As things stand, that is not assured. This is an obscure organization that is unknown to the majority of Canadians. There is almost no accountability to the people who pay half the bills.
It’s time some hard questions were asked.
