Thursday, February 16, 2012

Firing customers

Some customers are just more trouble than they're worth. They're always complaining, they're always threatening to sue you, they demand far more of your time than they're willing to pay for, and they think they know your business better than you do and demand that you act in ways that violate your professional ethics. In the end, you're better off firing them, because not only are they time-wasters, they're also much more likely to sue you -- and defending against even the most frivolous lawsuit in Federal court will cost you at least $100,000.

So now I hear that pediatricians are telling parents who refuse to vaccinate their children to find another doctor, and I understand completely. We now know that the only study to ever show a connection between autism and vaccines was a complete and utter fraud, and that removing mercury from vaccines had no effect on autism rates -- that is, there not only isn't a connection between vaccines and autism (other than the fact that vaccines tend to be given at the same time that symptoms of autism become evident), but the only theories about how vaccines might cause autism turned out to be either balderdash or outright fraud, while vaccines have saved millions of lives over the past fifty years.

So basically, if you have a parent today insisting that you don't vaccinate her child, what you're facing is basically a kook who believes she knows better than the entire medical profession, a kook who, because she thinks she knows more medicine than you do, will sue you in a heartbeat if you don't treat her little darling in ways that violate your professional ethics. This is the same sort of patient who would insist on treating her child's cancer with herbal remedies that have been proven to be ineffective and become extremely upset and sue you when you reported her instead to Child Protection for endangering her child's health via neglect by refusing to allow a pediatric oncologist to treat her child.

Given that, it's amazing that *only* 30% of pediatricians will fire customers who refuse to vaccinate their children. Those customers are lawsuits waiting to happen, and the fact that 70% of pediatricians will gulp and do their best to care for the child despite a parent who is an utter abusive loon pretty much is proof that the majority of pediatricians are saints. Because they're certainly not in it for the money (I make more money than the typical pediatrician and work nowhere near as hard)...

-- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

4 comments:

  1. I quit reading that article when I reached the part where she revealed that she paid herself 5 1/3 times what she paid her employees. Wonder if that was before or after her own benefits?

    Anyway, back to your point. Frankly, people that refuse to vaccinate their children should lose them temporarily ( long enough to catch them up on vaccines), or at least not be allowed to get a waiver and enter them in school.

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  2. Given that, it's amazing that *only* 30% of pediatricians will fire customers who refuse to vaccinate their children.

    I, too, am amazed at that number. Were I a pediatrician, I'd be blunt: go find another doctor. Perhaps that's part of why I'm a scientist, not a doctor.

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  3. Tux, I appreciate the desire to eliminate spam, but the new Capcha scheme is nothing short of torture. I cycle through 3 or 4 offerings before I find something I can actually semi-read; I type it in, hope for the best, and sometimes succeed. Take pity on your old readers and use another scheme.

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  4. Unfortunately I have no choice. The captcha thingy is provided by Blogger, not by me. The only other possible thing I could do would be to make the blog 100% moderated -- i.e., no comments would appear until I approved them -- and that's too much of a PITA both for you and for me.

    So blame Google for being evil :).

    - Badtux the Bloggered Penguin

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