All publicity is good as long as they spell the name right?
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
Â
Regular readers of this blog know that I have no love for Marshfield Clinic.
They just keep on giving me more reasons all the time not to like them.
Each year, Portage County spends thousands of dollars to prosecute defendants in criminal cases, and $10,000 of that is earmarked to pay for expert witnesses.
That money has typically been used to pay for the sort of specialists who must travel from afar to provide their expert opinion on a specific injury or piece of evidence.
That has changed in the last few years because of the Marshfield Clinic’s practice of charging the Portage County district attorney’s office fees for the testimony of local physicians directly involved in the treatment of crime victims, said Victim Witness Coordinator Carrie Davies.
While out-of-town doctors not involved in the treatment of a crime victim typically charge counties an extra fee, local doctors asked to describe a victim’s injuries and subsequent treatment are often described as “fact” witnesses. Davies said most local health care providers, such as Ministry Health Care, Aspirus and Theda Clark, rarely charge the district attorney’s office separate fees for such testimony, but Marshfield Clinic has made it regular practice.
According to Davies, the Clinic currently charges the county $495 for every hour a physician spends in court, on or off the stand, $495 an hour for a physician to testify by phone, $350 for every hour a physician spends reviewing a file, $350 for every hour Portage County District Attorney Thomas Eagon or one of the assistant district attorneys spends deposing a physician, and $245 for every hour the doctor spends traveling to court. The testimony of a witness with a doctoral degree costs $350 an hour; the testimony of a person with a master’s in social work goes for $245 an hour. The Clinic started charging the county such fees about five years ago, Eagon said.
Now that this story has come out expect more counties to come forward with similar tales.
Not that Marshfield Clinic cares what kind of publicity they get.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 4:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
