Legal risks for giving free medical advice

In the Courts. By Bonnie Booth, AMNews correspondent. March 13, 2006.

How many times has a patient stopped you in the grocery store, a parking lot, or at the soccer field where your child is playing and asked for a medical diagnosis?

How many times have you been cornered at a social event -- a holiday party or neighborhood gathering -- by a relative, friend or acquaintance and asked to answer a medical question or offer some medical advice?

It's probably happened more times than you can count.

It's possible that you find these interruptions of your leisure time an inconvenience, perhaps even an annoyance. But if you don't already consider them a legal risk, you should.

Consulting with a patient outside the exam room in an informal setting in no way lessens your legal liability. And since one of the best ways to protect yourself from liability is through documentation, an undocumented, casual exchange between you and your patient could lead to trouble. The level of risk, of course, is higher if the person who has approached you is already your patient, because a physician-patient relationship has clearly been established.

It is that type of parking lot conversation between a physician and patient that is at the center of a medical malpractice lawsuit filed late last year against a New York cardiovascular specialist.

According to the complaint filed in the state Supreme Court in Riverhead, N.Y., in Suffolk County, 67-year-old Herbert O'Rourke died seven days after an undocumented consultation with his physician of 20 years, Hachiro Nakamura, MD.