Articles Posted in In The News

A lawsuit has been initiated by a woman against Roseland Community Hospital after her sister’s death following gallbladder surgery.

According to court documents, Mary Baylock, administrator of the estate of the late Renina Baylock, is alleging medical malpractice and wrongful death against the hospital. The lawsuit was filed earlier this month on September 4th in Cook County Circuit Court’s Law Division. Baylock is alleging four counts of medical malpractice against Roseland Community Hospital and Dr. Dr. Pascual Sales.

The claim states that Renina Baylock was admitted as an inpatient to Roseland Community Hospital on March 4, 2014, to undergo a laparoscopic cholecystectomy to remove her gallbladder. The surgery was performed by Dr. Sales.

It seems to be a trend that doctors and healthcare organizations are either fraudulently billing or overbilling Medicare and other government healthcare agencies. Such practices constitutes fraud and can lead to extensive fines and time in jail for those who are found guilty.

Recently, Dr. Arthur Davida, MD, one of the owners of Home Care Physicians, Inc., pleaded guilty this week to causing some $4 million in healthcare fraud. Davida allowed healthcare agencies to fraudulently bill Medicare in-home treatment that was medically unnecessary. Davida requested that the agencies certify that patients had been combined to a home setting with the knowledge that a minimum of 20 percent of patients were not confined to their homes. The Department of Justice indicated that Davida provided the certifications fearing that if he didn’t do so, he would no longer receive referrals.

The Medicare mandate requires that a patient is required to be certified as being confined to their homes before such specialized care will be paid for. As a result of Davida’s signed orders, Medicare paid over $20 million to home-health agencies. Davida admitted to the DOJ that he had been the cause of over $4 million in Medicare losses as a result of his actions.

With the changes in healthcare happening across the country, there is increasing concern over religious healthcare corporations that are absorbing other secular and independent hospitals. With the absorption of these once-secular institutions is the imposition of religious restrictions that are often at odds with standard medical procedure. The interests of religious theology can sometimes trump medical procedures that can lead to risking the health and the lives of patients.

In one recent incident, a woman who was traveling with her husband began having abdominal pain. The couple went to the nearest hospital where she was diagnosed with a ectopic pregnancy that was potentially fatal.

The doctors recommended immediate surgery to remove the woman’s fallopian tube. The procedure would cut in half the couple’s chances of conceiving a child. Doctors did not tell the couple that Methotrexate could have solved the issue without the need for surgery.

A woman has been awarded nearly $2.8 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit after she had sustained injuries resulting from a 2009 surgery performed at Crozer-Chester Medical Center.

According to court documents, Bonnie Semple, 56, was admitted to the hospital on March 26, 2009 for a lacerated liver after a traffic accident.

The attending trauma surgeon, Mohammed Budeir, performed a temporary tracheostomy on Semple on April 3, 2009. The lawsuit alleges that Budeir had made the tracheostomy incision too high, which caused permanent damage to her larynx and trachea. Semple must also have a permanent tube in her throat in order to breathe for the rest of her life.

A jury has awarded a former UNLV football player after allegations in a lawsuit that names a Las Vegas Surgeon having botched a surgery that cost the player his career as a player.

Beau Orth was awarded more than $4.2 million in a jury trial after just one hour of deliberation in a medical malpractice suit he brought against Dr. Albert Capanna. The lawsuit alleged that Capanna had been negligent when he operated on the wrong spot in Orth’s back, resulting in the damage of a once healthy disc and failing to repair the injured one.

Orth’s issues with back pain began just after his sophomore season in 2009, when he switched from defensive back to linebacker.

A Cook County woman has brought suit against a doctor and his employers on allegations of medical malpractice and sexual battery.

According to court documents, on August 20, in Cook County Circuit Court, Raquel Brown filed suit against the Housecall Physicians Group of Rockford, Housecall Physicians Group of Illinois, MD@Home Management and Dr. Charles DeHaan, both individually and as an employee or agent of the other defendants named in the lawsuit.

Brown alleges that between May 1 and August 14, 2013, DeHaan unlawfully used his position as a doctor to engage in non-consensual touching of the patient’s breasts and genitalia. Brown also alleges in the lawsuit that she suffered bodily injury caused by the doctor’s abuse which has caused her both pain and suffering and she now faces ongoing medical care and related expenses as a result.

In spite of overwhelming bipartisan support in the State Assembly and sponsorship by a majority of the State Senate, and endorsement by Governor Andrew Cuomo, the bill known as Lavern’s Law was prevented from ever coming to a vote this summer by the Senate majority leader, John J. Flanagan, (R). The move has effectively killed a bill that would redress a lack of fairness for patients in medical malpractice cases.

The bill is named after a Brooklyn woman, Lavern Wilkinson, who had a highly curable form of lung cancer. However, because her condition was untreated because doctors at Kings County Hospital failed to alert her to a suspicious mass noted on an X-ray taken three years earlier, the cancer reached an advanced stage where it was no longer curable. Lavern Wilkinson died as a result.

Lavern’s daughter, who has severe medical issues of her own, was prevented from bringing a lawsuit against the physicians and the hospital for their negligence because in New York a victim has only two and a half years from the time that a medical mistake is made to file a lawsuit rather than from the time in which an error or mistake is discovered. While 44 states in the United States have laws on the books that would allow a patient or their family to bring suit, New York does not. Lavern’s Law would have made the State of New York the 45th state to make such a provision.

A woman has been awarded $1.75 million dollars by a Jefferson County Circuit Court in a medical malpractice case after deliberating for approximately three hours.

According to court documents, Angela Thornton filed suit against Dr. Shabir Dharamsey, alleging that he implanted an internal cardiac defibrillator that was medically unnecessary.

Attorneys for the plaintiff asserted that Thornton did not have any previous history of a heart condition or a cardiac condition that would require her to have the device implanted at the time of the surgery which took place in November 2010.

A woman has filed a malpractice lawsuit against her husband’s doctors and the hospital where he was treated. She alleges that malpractice resulted in her husband’s wrongful death.

The lawsuit brought by Stephanie Kleinman alleges that while under the medical care of the named defendants, Gary Klienman was cleared for a surgical procedure in spite of having both abnormal results in a pre-surgical stress test and an abnormal EKG test.

The plaintiff in the malpractice lawsuit further claims that her husband did not receive a proper angioplasty/stent procedure or angiography. Further, the defendants allegedly neglected to provide proper standard of care after he operation which ultimately led to Kleinman’s death on August 28th, 2013.

Three people have been convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and five counts of healthcare fraud by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force.

According to court records, Yaroslav “Steven” Proshak, Emilia Zverev, and Sharetta Michelle Wallace were connected to and convicted in the case. Proshak is the owner and operator of Los Angeles-based ProMed Medical Transportation, an ambulance transportation company providing Medicare beneficiaries with non-emergency ambulance transportation. Zverev was a billing manager and Wallace supervised emergency medical technicians (EMTs) for ProMed.

Evidence submitted to the court during the trial was gathered in the years 2008 and 2010. The evidence showed that the defendants plotted to bill Medicare for ambulance and transportation services that the company knew were unnecessary. Two of the defendants in the case told ProMed EMT’s to obscure patient’s medical conditions by making changes to paperwork and to create fraudulent documents that erroneously would specify that the transportation services were needed.