Litigation involving neurological specialties is nearly always tied to poor surgical outcome due to misdiagnosis, delay in diagnosis, faulty surgical technique, infection, or other complications. While such events are often devastating for the patient, justice requires that when expert opinion/testimony is needed, it be truly expert, impartial, and available to all litigants.

To that end, Top NeuroDocs has developed the following Code of Ethics to guide doctors providing litigation services in medical malpractice, personal injury, and criminal cases.

Impartial Testimony

• The expert shall be independent and should never take on the role of advocate or pre-judge a case.
• The expert shall be impartial regardless of who is paying for his or her services.
• The expert shall not be evasive for the purpose of favoring one litigant over another. The expert shall answer all properly framed questions pertaining to his or her opinions on the subject matter thereof.

Subject Matter Knowledge

• The expert shall review all pertinent available medical information about a patient prior to rendering an opinion about the appropriateness of medical or surgical management of that patient.
• The expert must have documented education, training and experience relevant to the case.
• The expert shall be knowledgeable with the applicable standard of care before providing his or her opinion/testimony about such standard and shall with reasonable accuracy state whether a particular action was clearly within, clearly outside of, or close to the margins of the applicable standard of care.
• The expert witness shall identify as such any personal opinions that vary significantly from generally accepted practice.

Compensation

• The expert shall not accept a contingency fee for providing expert medical opinion services.
• Charges for medical expert opinion services shall be reasonable and commensurate with the time and effort given to preparing and providing those services.