Rhune
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Patient successfully sues late Doctor
« on: Jul 31st, 2003, 12:44pm » |
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(CNN) -- Aristotelis Belavilas was awarded $250 in a Las Vegas, Nevada, small claims court this month after suing his doctor for arriving nearly four hours late for an appointment.
Belavilas, 58, has chronic back pain and was scheduled for a spinal injection. Dr. Ty Weller arrived minutes before the surgery center was scheduled to close, so Belavilas canceled the appointment for fear the procedure would be rushed. He later sued for $5,000, The Associated Press reported.
Weller said his patients did have to wait but should be sympathetic to the doctor's concerns. He said had to treat patients at four centers that February day, and he overbooked to accommodate Belavilas before the patient left on a trip to Europe the next day.
"While I do genuinely sympathize with him for having to wait because no one really should, sometimes it's unavoidable," Weller said.
CNN anchor Heidi Collins discussed the case with Belavilas.
COLLINS: The doctor says he was at four different offices that day, and he fit you in kind of at the last minute to be seen. Is that true?
BELAVILAS: No, it's not true. I don't know what he had be doing. That's the story he gave afterwards.
What I believe it is, the doctor overbooked, did not pay attention. People are people and they have to be respected. And he can come with a cheap excuse [and] says, "I'm God and you're not. And I do whatever I want." And that's what I believe he did.
COLLINS: I'm curious what you think you're waiting for when you are in a waiting office and you've been there for an hour and a half or two hours. What is going on that you're not being able to be seen?
BELAVILAS: Like I say, they could have said that the doctor has a heavy schedule and give me some pain pills and go home and do it when my trip is finished and ease my pain. Apparently they didn't care even to give that when I asked. They said the doctor has to prescribe. And I was in pain for four hours and nobody cared about it.
COLLINS: What about going to an emergency room?
BELAVILAS: Apparently it wasn't an emergency, it's a chronic pain.
COLLINS: Do you think or do you see any side of the argument that when you go to the doctor some of the reasons for it taking such a long time is because the doctor is trying to provide individualized care for each of one of his patients, [and] sometimes it might take longer than other times? Or does that not float with you?
BELAVILAS: I have an excellent doctor that I respect very much. I respect the profession very much. [My three doctors] are beautiful people. I don't wait more than an hour, ever. And [they] treat me nice.
This gentleman, I think, is for [the] money, and people like him I don't respect.
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