I may be getting sued-OMG

[JTD]

I had quite the wake-up call today:

I work from home as a supervisor for a medical transcription company. I woke up at about 7:30 this morning to an MSN instant message from our customer service people that this Dr. was going ballistic. He needed his dictation and needed it now. He was very abusive to our customer service staff and they warned me about that before asking me to call him.

What had happened was that our server had a major break-down (i.e., totally crashed) over the weekend and any dictations that doctors had done over the phone were not going to be retrievable until the server was back up.

So, I called this doctor's office yesterday because I knew that they could be quite troublesome and said "Is everything OK" and they said "yeah, everything's fine."

So then I wake up this morning and this Dr. is calling customer service repeatedly, non-stop. He said that he needed his dictation in the next 5 minutes or he was quitting the company. When I called him, he said "patient care has been compromised" and "let me tell you your company is just about to have the biggest legal problems ever" and he spoke in a very snarly tone. I have never spoken to anyone like that in my life. He's supposed to be a M.D. I thought M.D.'s were professional.

I tried to explain to him that I had called yesterday and that I'd send the dictation to him as soon as I got it and that we had server issues outside of anyone's control. He wasn't having any of it. I finally got the dictation about 2 hours later and typed it out super fast and faxed it to him with a cover page apology, a very profuse apology I might add.

So, I was just wondering what the board thoughts on this are and:
1. Can a U.S. resident legally sue a Canadian resident? Presumably, since it is the company he'd be suing and not me personally, that's a moot issue right?
2. What do you think of what happened?
3. Do you think that my apology, getting the letter to him and cover letter might convince him to stay with us? This is the 1st time I've ever had a problem like this.

Needless to say, I sent him a fax with the apology because speaking to him imo would not be a good idea.

What a horrible experience.

[GalvestonDuck]

Heck, we've had issues with the transcription vendor for our hospital and we work it out. Sometimes it's a problem with our server that receives the files, sometimes it's theirs. Sometimes there are problems with the transcriptionist. But regardless, we just communicate and work it out.

If the company is out of contract (not getting the dictations typed and sent within the 24 hour turnaround time), we make sure we're not charged for it or that get credit for it. I'm sure you guys have a contract with him like that also.

There will always be computer issues at inopportune times...that is a sad, inevitable fact of life in these days. He should anticipate that it won't always be perfect. I don't see where he could sue your company (IMO). Surely he had some type of notes on the patient already, either what he jotted down during the previous visit on which he had dictated or nurse's notes.

I think he was trying to scare you guys.

[JTD]

Heck, we've had issues with the transcription vendor for our hospital and we work it out. Sometimes it's a problem with our server that receives the files, sometimes it's theirs. Sometimes there are problems with the transcriptionist. But regardless, we just communicate and work it out.

If the company is out of contract (not getting the dictations typed and sent within the 24 hour turnaround time), we make sure we're not charged for it or that get credit for it. I'm sure you guys have a contract with him like that also.

There will always be computer issues at inopportune times...that is a sad, inevitable fact of life in these days. He should anticipate that it won't always be perfect. I don't see where he could sue your company (IMO). Surely he had some type of notes on the patient already, either what he jotted down during the previous visit on which he had dictated or nurse's notes.

I think he was trying to scare you guys.

GV, thanks for your reply!!! It made me feel a lot better.

What I presume because he started calling at 11 p.m. last night is that maybe he needed the dictation for a patient he was paged over night from home to go take emergency care of.

Maybe he'd been up all night with the patient and that could explain the situation. I wish we could be a 24 hour company and could have gotten his call back then but we're not.

Still, though, like you said, he could have worked it out in a professional way. Any ideas why he felt the need to make threats? This is the 1st time we've ever had any trouble with this account. Probably to scare us, I guess, like you said.

Can a patient die without the typed out chart? I'm hoping that's not what happened.

Also, should I call him say tommorow or Friday? It'd be frightening to say the least if I did do that though.

P.S: The idea about a credit sounds great. I'll suggest that to my manager.

[abajan]

...There will always be computer issues at inopportune times...that is a sad, inevitable fact of life in these days. He should anticipate that it won't always be perfect...

EXACTLY! Some people expect everything to be perfect all the time. IMO, it's a sign of immaturity.

[breeze]

Jason, I work for a doc, and, I can tell you - we have problems getting
transcriptions in a timely fashion, all the time. The smart doc will always
scribble down what he/she wants to dictate, while they are assessing or
interviewing the patient, and uses these notes for their dictation. If
this doc didn't do that, then, that's probably why he was so livid. One
can always refer back to their notes while waiting on a transcription.
He basically had nothing to go on with his patient(s), and, sees so many
a day, that recalling any one in particular is a problem for him. Hopefully,
he'll learn to take notes...idealistically, anyway!

[rainstorm]

sounds like a self-important windbag jerk who thinks he is gods gift to the world. i wouldnt worry about it at all. i had a job once a few years ago working at a 24 hour gas station booth as a cashier. when i came in at 6am we had to run reports on the cash register and count things that took a few minutes. we had this man that would always come in at 6am, and he would always get mad if he had to wait to get gas. one day he was really mad and yelled at me that he couldnt afford to wait to get his gas because his job was so important(implying i was dirt). anyway, i told him if i had a job that so important that the world would come to an end if i didnt arrive on time, i would hire a limosine to take me to work. i thought the man was going to blow a gasket, his head turned beat red and i thought he was going to blow. lol!!. he called my manager, but she just laughed about it.