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Kaiser Permanente offers patients a handbook that is supposed to assist them with medical questions. It sounds like a good idea, right? Well, many aren’t so sure and think that the handbook may be asking patients to self diagnose instead of seeking the medical care they need. So, is the handbook helpful – or harmful?

Jeff Milman, a member of the Advocate Law Group Network who has been practicing law for over a quarter of a century and specializes in medical negligence, owns a copy of Kaiser’s handbook and has seen first hand how it has harmed patients. We asked him to explain. “I’m looking at it right now. It’s about a three-inch thick handbook that you are given when you become a new member at Kaiser. It has every disease known to man in there and it basically takes you step-by-step through this. The problem is that you’re asking patients oftentimes to self-diagnose.”

A truly extraordinary case Some cases are almost too extraordinary to believe. This is one of them. Milman told us, “I had a case against Kaiser where I was representing a young man who did not have a spleen since childhood. When you are asplenic, meaning no spleen, you are at risk for getting infections because you don’t have the same immune system. It’s compromised.”

“We alleged in that case that Kaiser had not given him the repeated Pneumovax that was required and hadn’t properly educated him about what to do if he presented with a fever. So what happens is, he comes home from his job as an aircraft mechanic and has what he feels is flu-like, an elevated fever. His wife puts him to bed with Theraflu and the next morning he’s tingling. He wakes up approximately a month later with all four of his extremities removed – a quadruple amputee.” Attorney Milman’s firm obtained nearly a million dollar recovery for the client in that case.

“In that case, we got a hold of the Kaiser patient handbook and we were looking for clues as to what Kaiser says to do when you have flu-like symptoms. My own infectious disease expert said he’d been practicing medicine for 28 years and if he followed half the stuff, he’d be dead. So it could be a help. It could be a burden. It depends how you approach that handbook.”