Thus far I’ve done three pieces this week on quickie defense medical exams, starting with Dr. Michael J. Katz getting busted for lying, the sanctions he may face and an investigative analysis of some of his other exams.
I intend to continue next week with more, including another investigative piece on how much time some other doctors popular with insurance companies spend with the claimants. Was Michael Katz (and Dr. Robert Israel before him) an aberration?
The story, by the way, has been ignored by the main stream press. Despite that, there have been over 15,000 page views of those blog posts. For a small, niche blog like mine, that’s a lot.
While some have come in from Above the Law (calling the story a “blockbuster”) and a couple of other blogs such as the Village Voice (which scored an interview with Dr. Katz), the vast majority have come in directly because they are circulating in the local legal community via email. Reddit, Facebook and Twitter have accounted for more as part of the word-of-mouth spread.
While the press might not yet understand what is happening, the local legal community knows that these doctors have seen thousands of claimants, and all those cases will be affected, with tens of millions of dollars or more on the line.
Also, a new website seems to have been spawned dedicated to the quickie medical exam: Bad IME
Stay tuned for Part 4.
(And a hat tip to Professional Liability Matters for the Pincchio graphic.)