After Ray McEachern's letter to the Governor was printed in the Indianapolis Star & News Dr. Peter Winters, of the State Medical Association, jumped to the defense of Indiana medicine. To defend Indiana's brutal malpractice and malpractice laws Winters pointed to Riley Hospital, The Cancer Survivors Park, transplants and the Dilley sextuplets - none of which were issues raised by McEachern and have absolutely nothing to do with malpractice. Winters, in his response, totally avoided the issue of physician-induced injury and the lack of accountability in Indiana.

Winters also pointed to the fact that Indiana physicians supported raising the cap.  As many Indiana survivors of physician-induced injuries have said, "You can raise the cap all you want.  If victims can't get an attorney and can't get access to the courts or any other type of accountability, it doesn't matter.  Indiana doctors could actually afford to get rid of any and all caps at this point.  They apparently answer to no one and they know it." This was exemplified by their public relations campaign to raise the cap.

The following is a response that the Star & News failed to publish.  This response does address the issues faced by Hoosier medical consumers.

January 26, 1998

Letters to the Editor
Indianapolis Star

In his letter to the editor in the January 25^th edition, Dr. Peter Winters points to many valuable contributions that modern medicine has made toward improving our lives. Most people would not dispute this, but it is precisely because of the advances of the last 50 years that it is so important for patients to have legal protection from doctors who lack the skills so necessary for  safe and effective care. Because doctors have the technology to do things unheard of a few years ago, they also have the opportunity to cause more harm. Without the necessary laws to protect patients from careless or unskilled physicians, that potential to harm sometimes exceeds the potential to help.
Dr. Winters suggests that my estimate of the number of patients seriously injured by negligent medical treatment in Indiana in the last 20 years (54,000) is irrelevant since it was based on a study in New York. He points out that one of the six authors of the Harvard Medical Malpractice study has said he never hypothesized about the number of medical injuries in Indiana. That may be true, but the fact is that no one in Indiana has done a study of this issue that would suggest that medical care in Indiana is safer than in New York. Another of the authors of the Harvard study, Dr. Lucian Leape, has estimated the number of deaths nationwide as the result of medical injury (180,000). I applied the same logic to the number of patients in Indiana to arrive at my estimate of injuries there.
A 1997 study in Illinois reported that 18% of patients suffered a medical injury. Perhaps I should have used this percentage instead of the lower percentage found among the 30,000 patients studied in the 50 New York hospitals included in the Harvard study. Indeed according to an article in the December issue of The Female Patient, the AMA is apparently in agreement that there could be as many as 3 million medical injuries a year nationwide.

Instead of downplaying the estimates of medical injury in Indiana, Dr. Winters as head of  the Indiana Medical Association, should be working to find out how many medical injuries are in fact occurring. Personally, I would be embarrassed to admit that Indiana citizens have only estimates based on studies, rather than having factual information reported by each hospital. If the automobile or airline industry had the same error rate that is reported in study after study of the medical industry, there would be swift government action to correct the problem. The medical industry and the government of Indiana seems to be satisfied to deny the injuries are occurring rather than deal with the problem as the crisis that it is.

I commend the doctors in Indiana who are supporting the increase in the cap on medical malpractice awards, but the fact is that there should be no cap at all. The Illinois Supreme Court declared such caps to be unconstitutional in December. Other arbitrary restrictions on patients' rights in Indiana include the medical review panel that Indiana law requires review a medical malpractice claim before legal action can be filed, and the law that sets the malpractice insurance for doctors at only $100,000.  Most responsible businesses carry more automobile liability insurance than that. 
I would welcome the opportunity to debate these issues in any forum. One of the conclusions of the Harvard study was that being held accountable for mistakes helped to prevent them. This is only common sense borne out by scientific study. The AMA has recently established the Patient Safety Foundation to help prevent medical injury and the Joint Commission that accredits hospitals is now urging hospitals to report so-called "sentinel events" which kill or injury patients. What are Indiana doctors doing to protect patient?

Sincerely,

Ray McEachern