Servicemembers Have No Recourse For Malpractice

Many servicemembers and dependents reside in Georgia. While servicemembers can receive care at military hospitals they have no rights if they are the victim of malpractice, no matter how egregious. The Feres Doctrine, named after a 1950 Supreme Court decision, grants complete immunity to military health care professionals who commit malpractice upon service members. Service members who have sacrificed for their country and become victims of malpractice are left to suffer the consequences with no recourse.
This injustice has again come to light in the case of a 20-year-old Air Force serviceman who was reported to be in critical condition at the University of California Davis Medical Center on Monday, after losing both legs in what has been described as complications from routine gallbladder surgery.
The gall bladder surgery was performed at Travis Air Force Base. The Air Force would only comment that a “serious medical incident” occurred at its David Grant Medical Center on July 9 and is being investigated by the base, a national hospital accrediting commission and the U.S. Surgeon General.
The airman’s wife reported that he was supposed to get his gallbladder removed laparoscopically at the Travis hospital. Instead, a device being threaded into his belly nicked or punctured the aorta, the large artery that carries blood from the heart throughout the body.
Surgeons opened his abdomen and were able to repair the breach well enough to save his life, but in the process or afterward, something disrupted the blood supply to his legs. The airman’s wife said she was told the aorta was sewn together incompletely and began leaking.
According to reports, when the surgeons restored the blood supply to the iliac vessels, the legs were so badly swollen and damaged that blood circulated only down to the knees, leaving dead tissue below.
The Airman was then traansferred to the University of California Davis Medical Center where he underwent surgeries that removed first the lower-right leg, then the lower-left and more of the right.
The Airman’s wife also questions the over nine hours that passed from the initial surgical error until her husband was flown to UC Davis Medical Center. She wonders if his legs could have been saved had he been moved more quickly.
However, irrespective of any negligence on the part of the military surgeons or other healthcare professionals, this serviceman has no rights to seek recourse for his injuries.