ON-RAMP

Last July, San Diegan Diana Solomon fainted. Her doctor blamed it on her increased dosage of blood-pressure medicine and told her to forget about it. She did--for six weeks. Then she received a terse notice from the Department of Motor Vehicles informing her that her driving privileges had been revoked.

The letter was just one of 12,805 mailed last year by the Sacramento DMV on the heels of a 1989 lawsuit in which San Diego physician Mark Levine was slapped with $3.2 million in damages for failing to notify the department that one of his patients had epilepsy and so posed a freeway risk. The patient suffered a seizure at the wheel and caused catastrophic injury to another motorist. According to an obscure state law, doctors are required to make “confidential morbidity reports” to the DMV. The measure originally targeted individuals with such chronic neurological problems as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. But the mammoth award shocked California doctors; the number of such reports has since doubled. Antsy physicians--prodded by antsier insurance firms--may be tattling on any patient who complains of lightheadedness, although experts note that many fainting spells are unrelated to ongoing illness and are unlikely to recur.

Because regulations for reversing the driving suspensions are ill-defined, the appeals process is arduous. Already, Solomon has spent more than $4,000 in legal fees, trying to prove that she is not a menace on the road, and she still doesn’t have her license back; it takes most drivers at least six months. The DMV is working to craft better guidelines. Until then, doctors will probably continue to report even the slightest medical problems. “We have to spend more time reading legal journals than medical journals,” says Dr. Michael Resnick of KGTV’s “Staying Healthy.” “We have no choice if we want to avoid getting sued.”