Sunday Funday: The Insurance Rep and the Whopper

“…you arrived at UAMS as a trauma level II patient.”

This is just one lie told by The Doctors Company insurance risk manager, Steve Hillis. It is the purported reason the UAMS medical providers’ insurance company is making the non-consenting patient litigate to be compensated for two weeks of false imprisonment and battery.

Here is the trauma activation survey showing only one criterion checked off that can characterize a person as trauma level 1, 2, or 3. The criterion is a fall from greater than 20 feet. But the patient only jumped about 10 feet from the rung of a ladder. An EMT, who did not witness the injury, erroneously wrote that the fall was from the full height of the three-story house that the ladder had been leaning against.

The UAMS medical team adopted the EMT’s error as their narrative.

Here are a couple questions for Dr. Nolan Bruce, Dr. Natalie Applebaum, Dr. Adam Watkins, Dr. Jordan Takasugi, and Nurse Nathan Ernst, some of the 72 named defendants who were involved early on. Don’t give them any hints. These will probably be questions we ask them each at the trial.

What is the maximum number of stories that a 35-foot ladder can reach?

A. ground level

B. one story

C. two stories

D. three stories

Assume 35 feet is three stories. In your expert medical opinion, which of these are injuries that would be consistent with a fall from three stories?

A. a broken limb

B. a sprained wrist or ankle

C. a laceration

D. inability to ambulate

E. being in a coma

F. none of the above

Oh, shucks, we already know the UAMS medical team’s answer to that question. It is “F. none of the above.” The patient had none of the above injuries, and the UAMS team insisted he fell 35 feet and would need over $115,000 of forced medical care.

They looked at a man who had no broken limbs, no sprains, no lacerations, was able to ambulate; they documented that the patient answered questions about his domestic life and moods over the past two weeks; and they did not ask him what caused his head injury. Still, the UAMS medical team decided that the patient fell 35 feet.

The logic used by the literal brain surgeons was that the patient did not look as bad as a person who landed on his head after a 35-foot fall, but they would force him to stay in the ICU anyhow, because he fell 35 feet and might start to look like it eventually.

There is a very real chance that if you walk into UAMS Medical Center with a mild injury, they will hallucinate a scenario that requires them to bind you to a bed, pump you full of fentanyl, and rack up a six-figure bill while they observe you for two weeks.