Articles Posted in In The News

Triage is the sad art and science in deciding which medical cases are more serious than others. Hospitals have to make triage decisions all the time, and sometimes they make the wrong ones. This can lead to malpractice suits.

In a suit filed in West Virginia, a mother and child are suing a hospital for negligence. She originally went to the hospital for vaginal bleeding. She was 24 weeks pregnant. A nurse and a midwife examined her and she was given anti-contraction medication before being discharged.

But the pain started increasing. Two other examinations saw that problems appeared to be increasing, but not enough for full admission to the hospital. A week after her first visit, she was finally admitted and given a c-section. The child was born with serious cerebral palsy.

When a patient that comes into a hospital, doctors have to make many choices in deciding treatment. Sometimes those choices are clearly incorrect. Others are correct but carry risks that patients must be advised on. Before those procedures can be done, consent must be gained.

A possible confusion over consent forms is at the heart of Chicago malpractice case. The estate of a man is suing because they believe that the man, a non-native speaker of English, couldn’t understand what he was consenting to. The procedure in question was a blood transfusion. The man came to the hospital to be treated for pneumonia and acute leukemia. Eight days after admission the man died.

The estate seeks damages in excess of $50,000.

An important part of any medical procedure is consent. If you go in for surgery, part of the process is signing a consent form to allow the hospital to operate on you. But if something goes wrong during that surgery, you may be eligible for a malpractice claim.

A couple in Chicago filed a malpractice suit against the University of Chicago Medical Center and her doctors for what she experienced. She is claiming medical battery and malpractice. The complaint claims that she underwent a series of procedures for breast reconstruction after a mastectomy without her informed consent between December 2013 and May 2014. The suit alleges that the woman was permanently injured internally and externally and will have to undergo further treatment. The suit seeks $50,000 in damages and a jury trial.

Any time we go to the doctor we place our health in their care. Most doctors are trustworthy and have the best interests of patients in mind, but any doctor can make an error that deserves compensation. Recovery from surgery can take weeks or months, and it can be hard to tell what is normal recovery and what is a medical error.

When a loved one is at the end of their life, it can be very difficult to determine whether a doctor’s actions are malpractice, or if the patient is only suffering through the inevitable despite the effort of the doctor. Cases like these without a clear-cut answer can end up in a jury trial where either side can win.

According to a report in the Sun Journal, a jury found one malpractice case in favor of the defendants. They said the defendants were not negligent in their treatment of an 84-year-old man who died three hours after being discharged from a hospital.

The complaint claimed that the doctors did not check the man for pneumonia and made medication errors. The complain also alleged that the man was treated for COPD that didn’t exist, but the defendants were able to produce medical records that said he did have it. Expert witnesses from both sides gave claims as to the appropriate dosages for the medications the patient was taking. Witnesses from the defense also said that the doctor met and exceeded the standard of care.

Lawyers do their best to present cases before the court, but not every case that is presented goes to trial. Sometimes a malpractice case will be dismissed before it is heard by plaintiffs who discover additional information about their cases they didn’t know before they filed. This is called voluntary dismissal.

One such case happened recently according to the Madison Record. A woman received rotator cuff surgery. After the surgery, the woman’s arm was placed in a sling. The suit had their hand placed in a hyper-flexed position according to the complaint.

After experiencing extended numbness and a feeling of popping in the arm, an MRI was performed by the doctor who performed the surgery. Carpal tunnel syndrome had set in, likely because of the hyper-flexion. Additional surgeries were performed but the condition never improved.

It can be helpful for people who are about to undergo major surgery to be aware of which specialties have the highest rate of malpractice claims. Medscape does an annual review on why doctors get sued and which professions are seeing increases or decreases in claims. Here are some statistics from this year’s report.

* 59% of the surveyed physicians were named in at least one malpractice suit during their career. Around 4,000 doctors were surveyed total.

* Of those that were sued, only 12% of them were the only parties sued. 47% were part of a group of doctors sued, and the remainder were institutions.

Suffering from medical malpractice is more than just about getting recompense for pain and suffering. It can prevent people from going to work. When an injured person is unable to get income it can cause a cascading effect that can threaten homes, families, and relationships.

A famous rock musician in Riverside is experiencing this first hand. Terry Corso is the frontman for the band Alien Ant Farm. The band achieved popularity a few years ago for their cover of the song Smooth Criminal.

In 2010, Corso went to the hospital for diverticulitis, a very dangerous and painful condition. After the surgery, problems continued. It was eventually discovered that a piece of gauze was left in his body and he underwent additional surgeries. By the time everything was finished, his entire colon had to be removed and he still had problems with perforations. For the last two years he has lived with open wounds.

Humans aren’t the only ones that can be part of a medical malpractice suit. Veterinarians can also be sued for malpractice as well. Here is an example of this that happened in late November.

A pure-bred dog was taken to a vet for dental problems. Seven of the dog’s teeth were pulled without the owner’s permission. Due to this, the dog caught an infection of flesh-eating bacteria that destroyed the left side of his face and left him blind in one eye. It took seven vets to finally get a drug combination that treated the infection. Thankfully the dog survived and is doing well.

However, the owner was left saddled with $32,000 in bills. The owner sued the vet who pulled the dog’s teeth. The doctor referred the man to his insurer and the company denied the claim, saying the vet was not negligent. The suit now goes to court.

In yesterday’s article we talked about the relationship between malpractice insurers and their doctors. One unfortunate case in New Jersey shows what can happen when things go really wrong. Here are the details.

In 2010, a patient had surgery on his foot. The surgery was botched badly, with the patient’s foot turned inward. The podiatrist said that he had no assets and the matter went to the doctor’s malpractice insurer. However, the underwriters on the policy said that they would not pay? Why? Because the doctor had lied on his original application to obtain the policy.

The case went all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court. In a 5-2 decision, they allowed the insurer to back-date their cancellation of the policy. This means that the patient now has no ability to recoup damages from the doctor.