Posted On: March 14, 2008, 3:29 pm CDT

Posted By: Calif Ex Pat

Take it from an old Med-Mal guy who has done 1000's of Doc and Hospital cases, there are a lot more of these incompetents out there. Anyway, this one is on the HCA hospital's Credentialing Committee - they are supposed to confirm all of the information in the Doc's CV and practice history (including a National Data Base reporting check) when he applies for privileges to practice at the hospital - a reasonable due diligence would have turned up his checkered history - BUT - under served areas (no rich patients) are loath to ask too many questions when they have an applicant in an under served, overstressed specialty. West VA is heavy in mining, agriculture, trucking and poor judgement accident injuries so an orthopod (even a grade C one) would be a BILLING asset to the hospital as there would be plenty of cases to keep him busy and the billing office humming w/ Work Comp and 3rd party insurance invoices. It's a real old joke, but "what do you call the med student who graduated last in his/her class ?? You call them 'doctor'