Tales from The Rabbit Hole…
For my next installment, we are going to visit feedback from blog and social commentary on my previous post, “Kicked to the curb for refusing to vaccinate…”. Of course, owing all due credit to the bloggers who inspired that post, their ideas have led to a virtual feeding frenzy of new ideas to most effectively target unfriendly doctors and sic the system on them.
In this post, we will explore a few of them.
An ounce of thoughtfulness is worth a pound of Jurisprudence…
Perhaps the most important bit of feedback that presented itself is: Make sure you file only legitimate complaints with the Medical Boards. This can’t be stressed enough. You could potentially face legal consequences for filing false reports. For anything outside of a strictly factual and legitimate report, I’ll have to refer you to a lawyer of your choice.
That said, nobody should fear filing an accurate complaint against a doctor who treated you or your child. Use your heads.
Dissecting the complaint against Dr. Sears…
It came to me while reading various comments, the complaint filed by the California Attorney General against Dr. Sears could serve as a framework for the kinds of complaints one might choose to file against their doctor. I mean, the Attorney General by virtue of filing their complaint, has demonstrated standards that she believes all physicians are required to uphold.
The complaint is available online here. I am posting excerpts from that filing below.
Your Medical Records
Are yours, of course. You can request them from your doctor at any time, and they must produce them and give them to you. The office is allowed to charge a reasonable fee for creating duplicates, $30 or so.
One thing we are learning from the complaint against Dr. Sears is failure to keep meticulous medical records can be viewed as gross negligence. So get a copy of yours or your child’s medical records and bust out your favorite Sherlock Holmes-style spyglass. I mean, you do have more than one of those, right?
Verify that letters are in your file…
Dr. Sears stands accused of failing to keep a copy of a medical exemption letter in his files. Well, you probably don’t want to file a case against a doctor who excused your kid from vaccination, but are there any notes or letters that should have been kept in your file that are not there?
Neurological Examination Required…
The young patient’s parent described a head injury to her child of being “hit on head by hammer” two weeks prior to the visit.
If you reported head trauma, nausea, dizziness, lethargy, loss of strength in hands or limbs, unequal or unresponsive pupils, eyes not tracking, inability to curl tongue right and left, your doctor should have at the very least performed a basic neurological exam and documented it thoroughly. Even if your child was hit on the head two weeks ago and had no other symptoms at all. Or in relation to a vaccine injury. Failure to do so can be viewed as gross negligence. Failure to perform or refer follow-on treatment based on a neurological assessment, also can be viewed as gross negligence.
Everything the doctor did in relation to your child’s injury should be documented. Medications prescribed. Recommendations for over-the-counter medications. Phone calls made to you. All aspects of the doctor’s interaction with you and with their treatment plan should be thoroughly documented.
Ad infinitum…
The same level of documentation applies to any serious, potentially life-threatening symptom you report to your doctor. Anaphalaxis? Better be documented. Encephalopathy? Better be documented. Death? I think you get the point. Which leads us to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
About reporting to VAERS
Doctors are required to report any reaction to VAERS that is covered in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program’s (NVICP) vaccine injury table. Reporting of other reactions is optional. So in cases where the reaction matches an inoculation in the aforementioned table, failure to file a VAERS Report constitutes gross negligence, and should result in a complaint from you.
When evaluating a patient for a vaccine injury
So make sure that history is present in your child’s medical records too. And report it if not.
About Informed Consent
Frequent BolenReport commenter Ralph Fucetola JD points out on my previous post:
YES! The exemption from tort liability written into the VICP does not apply to complaints to the state medical boards. Great approach. For at least 100 years, the law has been clear: it is malpractice, and assault and battery, for a physician to engage in a medical intervention without Informed Consent.
In other words, if your doctor vaccinated your children without ensuring you understood all the risk factors detailed in the Vaccine INSERT (not the “info” sheet), and an adverse reaction or death occurred, pallets full of banker boxes full of case law say they are guilty of malpractice. You can’t hold the doctor directly liable for damages, but the NVICP does not save them from disciplinary action by your state Medical Board.
Please, come forward…
I’m not going to help promote the So. Cal. Public Radio post that contains this call to action from California Medical Board Spokeswoman Cassandra Hockenson. You’ll have to Google that for yourself (hehehe, obligatory obtuse reference to a prior post). But this is what she stated publicly in the last few days:
The Medical Board doesn’t comment about open complaints, said spokeswoman Cassandra Hockenson. She said the original accusation against Sears stands on its own right now, but if other people have questions or issues, she encourages them to come forward.
So indeed, come forward. Make your calls to your local Medical Board about any discrepancy between reality and your medical records, to see if it constitutes a legitimate complaint. If you are told “No, that would not constitute a legitimate complaint”, and you want to disclose it in the comments below, please feel free. Myself and other clever thinkers in our movement will consider any information presented.
Come forward even if you aren’t in California…
The tireless activists over at EducateAdvocateCA have compiled a list of links for reporting to Medical Boards in all 50 states. The list is viewable here, which means in one tap you are within scrolling range of filing your report, wherever you are.
In closing…
File your complaints, but be sure they are legitimate complaints. If you have any ideas at all, please comment below. It is a safe place to disclose your ideas. If you have a game-changing idea, you can send it via The Bolen Report Contact Form and we will keep it confidential and help you formulate a plan of action to bring your awesome idea to bear.
And just in case you were seeking to help Dr. Sears, find out how to send your monetary gift to him by visiting the #StandWithSears website.
Brilliant!
In the latest ridiculous complaint, Rhett Krawitt’s family alleges that Dr. Sears diagnosed someone he had never done an exam on. Dr. Sears made this comment during the SB277 hearings after the Krawitt family’s detailed testimony of their child’s medical history. Dr. Sears’ comment was a direct quote from the Merck Varivax insert that immunocompromised individuals should not be exposed to anyone who had a live vaccine within a 6 week time period.
My comment on that article is this: if this is the accepted parameter of a complaint to a Medical Board, then anyone who has had a doctor tell them that they or their family didn’t have a vaccine reaction without physically doing an exam is also guilty and should be reported. This includes doctors with blogs, who use names/pseudonyms, who berate and discount patients’ histories without ever seeing them.
The Krawitt’s complaint is retroactive from a year ago, so apparently there is no time limit on the “unethical” comment.
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