Articles Posted in In The News

What happens to doctors after they lose a malpractice claim? In many cases, malpractice insurance takes care of the actual payment. Most doctors have to carry malpractice insurance as a matter of good business policy. But when a fight erupts between a doctor and their insurer, the results can get expensive quickly.

Here is one instance. In 2004 a physician performed a liposuction procedure on a patient. Later that evening the patient suffered a heart attack and died. The patient’s estate told the doctor they would file a malpractice suit. The doctor’s insurance company agreed to a settlement and sent a check for the policy limit.

However, the doctor’s attorney also offered to submit the case to binding arbitration with no limitation on the amount of damages. That arbitration panel awarded $35.3 million to the estate. The doctor believed that the insurance company acted in bad faith in handling the original claim. The case went to court and a circuit judge sided with the insurer, but on appeal that decision was rejected. Now the doctor can pursue bad-faith arguments related to the decision to go to arbitration.

Nearly every doctor will receive at least one malpractice claim against them at some point during their career. The chances go up if the doctor is a specialist. But when 300 people file, serious questions must be raised about their practice.

A cardiologist in Indiana is facing this problem. A trial is scheduled to begin next week for one of the plaintiffs. The plaintiff claims the cardiologist implanted a pacemaker in her husband that became infected. The infection wasn’t appropriately treated, nor was the husband’s primary care physician notified of the infection or the pacemaker implant. The man eventually died from his injuries.

One thing that will weigh heavily against the doctor in the case is unrelated litigation regarding the unnecessary implantation of medical devices. Nearly 300 patients have filed complaints saying they received open heart surgery and medical devices that were unnecessary. In Indiana, malpractice claims must be heard by a state review board before they can go to trial. At least two of the people filing a malpractice claim have received the go-ahead to go to trial, but those won’t happen until at least 2017.

Medical practice is fraught with many dangers. There is always the chance that something can go wrong, and an unfavorable result isn’t always due to negligence. This is something that all malpractice lawyers and their clients should remember.

Despite all efforts, one malpractice case in Louisiana reached the state’s Supreme Court before it was dismissed. The plaintiff claimed that he had bile leaking from his liver after a gall bladder surgery. The plaintiff’s wife also filed for a loss of spousal benefits. The court refused to hear the case.

A medical board review four years ago said that leaking bile after a gall bladder surgery was a very common side effect and that this result did not breach the standard of care. However, the surgeon did admit that they operated on the wrong duct the first time and had to perform a second surgery to fix the problem. After the symptoms developed, the couple sued but a jury dismissed their claim. They moved to appeal.

A jury in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court has awarded $10.1 million to a mother and her son after physicians at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia failed to timely diagnose his bacterial meningitis even after several trips to the hospital emergency room.

According to the complaint, Shamir Tillery, now 6, suffers from hearing loss, language disorder, developmental and learning delays, and a loss of balance after contracting meningitis when he was just 11 months old.

The boy’s mother first took him to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on December 21, 2009 after the infant had been sick for several days with fever and other related symptoms. Attending physicians at hospital initially diagnosed Shamir with an upper respiratory infection and sent him home with little in the way of treatment.

The Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania has found a way to help lessen the incidence of malpractice lawsuits filed in the case of mothers who have given birth and suffer from the medical issue of postpartum blood loss. The condition is the leading cause of death for women if the bleeding is not caught in time. That is why doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals worked through a simulation of a postpartum hemorrhage with an actor posing a patient having a severe postpartum complication.

According to one of the participants in the training, nurse Lauren Hughes, “It mimicked the chaos” of real life.”

These trainings that deal in various high-risk simulations have helped the University hospital system cut malpractice expense by as much as 26 percent since 2011 and allowing them to save $92.2 million in the year, even as revenue rose by some 28 percent, to $4.3 billion.

A medical malpractice lawsuit that alleged screws were improperly placed and breached the patient’s spinal canal has been removed from court.

According to court documents, Fernando Calverese and Diane Calverese filed a lawsuit on August 31st against St. Louis University after having received medical care and treatment for an unspecified condition in October of 2014.

The plaintiffs allege that the hospital was negligent in performing a surgery when pedical screws were improperly placed and breached the spinal canal at multiple levels. In addition, the plaintiffs are also alleging that the defendant inappropriately used unnecessary hardware, failed to recognize neurological impairment post-operatively and failed to diagnose breached pedical screws resulting in neurological impairment.

Doctors in Tennessee are pressuring state legislators to protect a 2011 law that caps the awards that juries can make in medical malpractice lawsuits. Fearful that the caps will be struck off the books, doctors want lawmakers to amend the state’s constitution.

The Tennessee Medical Association wants legislators to put the matter before voters in order to alter the constitution so that the General Assembly would have the authority to set caps on non-economic damages such as pain and suffering in cases which involved medical malpractice liability.

The group hopes to persuade the GOP-dominated 109th General Assembly to approve the proposed amendment in 2016 and then also influence the succeeding 110th Assembly to approve the measure by a two-thirds majority.

A couple is suing a Torrance doctor who allegedly terminated the pregnancy of a woman without her consent because of an embryo mix-up during an in-vitro fertilization process.

According to court documents, David and Melissa Pineda have named Dr. Rifaat Salem in a malpractice lawsuit after an IVF treatment that Melissa Pineda received in February of 2014.

Melissa Pineda was implanted with embryos in Dr. Salem’s office on February 7th. Two days later, on a Sunday, the doctor called the home of the Pinedas and said he wanted to come into the office immediately, even though it was on the weekend.

A jury has found that a Basalt doctor is not guilty in a lawsuit connected to the death of a man in Carbondale following the patient’s knee surgery.

Court documents indicate that Dr. Thomas Moore was named in a malpractice lawsuit along with Ursula Ayers, mother of Hans Ayers, alleging that Dr. Moore failed to catch symptoms of her son’s fatal blood clot in 2012.

However, the jury which consisted of three men and three women, plus two alternates, deliberated for only 90 minutes before finding the physician innocent of any negligence.

A malpractice lawsuit has been settled against an orthopedic surgeon who is now also facing criminal charges in two counties.

The lawsuit filed against Dr. Jake Heinkey, 40, and his former practice, Cutting Edge Orthopaedics LLC was filed in Lucas County Common Pleas Court by Ruth and Phillip Anderson of Ottawa Lake last year. The case was dismissed last week after the litigants settled the case out of court.

The case alleged that Mrs. Anderson alleged she was left with permanent nerve damage in her left leg after Dr. Heinkey performed hip replacement surgery on her Jan. 24, 2014, at Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center.