Frankly, you should hope that you never get a firsthand chance to find out the answer to this question. A medical malpractice trial is a high stakes gamble in which hundreds of thousands of dollars are at risk and your fate is in the hands of eight strangers, who are probably quite skeptical about your claim.

A medical malpractice trial is the culmination of a process that has been going on for one to two years already. Your lawyer has investigated your claim and concluded it is meritorious. He or she has…
Continue Reading What Happens In A Medical Malpractice Trial?

Heart disease is a disease of aging. If you live long enough, your heart, the hardest working muscle in your body, will begin to show signs of wear and tear. If you don’t take good care of it, you won’t have to wait until you are elderly for your heart to give you trouble.

Heart disease is the most common cause of death among men and women of most ethnic groups. Sometimes heart disease has a strong genetic component and there is not much we can do to change our parents and…
Continue Reading Good Heart Health Benefits The Entire Body

When a prospective client calls me, quite often I can tell as soon as I hear the facts that this is not going to be a case I can take. The patient was too sick to survive the treatment, or it is unclear who did what, or the statute of limitations has already run, or the injury was too small, etc. There are many reasons that may be clear right away why I cannot take a case. However, if the case sounds promising, I will begin an investigation.

It takes time to investigate a…
Continue Reading Investigating A Medical Malpractice Case

When medical malpractice occurs, doctors face an ethical test. Medical ethics require a doctor to be honest with the patient. If the doctor knows that he has made a mistake which injured his patient, is he going to be honest with the patient and tell him the truth or is he going to hide the mistake?

As early as 1847, American Medical Association promulgated a Code of Ethics setting forth the principles of conduct expected of all physicians. Although specific aspects of the Code have changed over the years, the general principle of…
Continue Reading To Tell Or Not To Tell

As The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, famously observed, “They tempt you, Sir, with silver. They tempt you, Sir, with gold. They tempt you with the pleasures that the flesh does surely hold.” Temptation is all around us and healthcare providers are no more immune to it than the rest of us. As if we needed any more reminders that those we entrust with our healthcare are human and subject to all the frailties of the human soul, we see these stories from the news.

A Massachusetts doctor has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding Medicare…
Continue Reading More Healthcare Providers Behaving Badly

I wish I could take every case presented to me in which the doctor or nurse or other healthcare provider committed malpractice. I would be an even busier attorney because there is so much malpractice. At least 50% of the cases I see involve malpractice which caused some harm to the patient. While technically that is enough to support a lawsuit, standing alone it is not enough to make for an economically viable medical malpractice lawsuit. An economically viable medical malpractice case is the only one that can be brought. Because of the expense of a malpractice suit, an economically…
Continue Reading The Economics of a Medical Malpractice Case

Last week I discussed “standard of care,” one of the three essential elements of a medical malpractice claim. In addition to proving a breach of the standard of care, a patient plaintiff must also prove that the breach caused her to be damaged. Causation is a difficult element and one which confers an advantage upon healthcare providers who get sued.

Cause in a medical malpractice case must be what the law calls “proximate cause.” As set forth in the Arizona jury instructions for medical negligence, “Negligence causes an…
Continue Reading Proving Causation in a Medical Malpractice Case: Another Advantage for Defendants

The “Standard of Care” is one of the critical elements of any medical malpractice case. In order to be successful, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant medical care provider fell below the standard of care and that the failure to meet the standard of care caused harm to the plaintiff. In short, the three elements of a medical malpractice claim are (1) a breach of the standard of care, which (2) causes (3) harm to the plaintiff.

The standard of care is that minimum level of…
Continue Reading What Is Meant By “Standard of Care” In A Medical Malpractice Case?

I have represented many families in birth injury cases. I have reviewed many, many potential birth injury cases that I did not accept. In every one of those cases, the fetal heart monitor strip was an essential piece of evidence. Just how reliable is it?

Birth injury cases have resulted in many of the largest medical malpractice verdicts. These cases are incredibly sad and usually involve very badly damaged infants or babies who died during or shortly after birth. If the infant survived, she or he was usually in need of a lifetime of expensive care. Verdicts exceeding $10M are…
Continue Reading How Reliable Are Fetal Heart Monitors?

The United States is awash in vaccine skepticism. It has become a political football and a culture war casualty. Many states have either eliminated the requirement that school children be vaccinated before being allowed in the classroom or have so weakened the requirement that almost any parent can opt out for almost any reason or no reason at all. The result is an increasing number of unvaccinated children attending school which has led to outbreaks of communicable diseases vaccines can prevent.

You don’t have to go very far back in history to see what the world was like before the…
Continue Reading Vaccines: Victims Of Their Own Success

When you go to see a medical professional because you are not feeling well, you expect the professional to figure out what is wrong with you, if possible, and make you better. The differential diagnosis is a big part of that process.

The first thing that happens in a medical encounter is getting the patient’s chief complaint. Why are you here? What is bothering you?

The next thing that should happen in a typical encounter is the recording of the patient’s vital signs. Temperature, pulse rate, blood pressure and respiration rate. Sometimes the vital signs alone provide the key to…
Continue Reading The Differential Diagnosis: What Is It?

Earlier this year, Congress passed a spending bill through the process known as reconciliation, which means that the majority party does not need any votes from the minority and the bill is not subject to filibuster in the Senate. The bill was wide-ranging. One of the things it did was change Medicaid eligibility rules in a way that is predicted to result in millions of people losing their Medicaid coverage and the closure of many, mostly rural, small hospitals. The bill also cut the Covid-era subsidies given to people purchasing private insurance in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces. Many…
Continue Reading Think The Medicaid and ACA Cuts Won’t Affect You? Think Again.

Emergency departments see it all. They are almost always busy these days. They may be short on staff or at least not have enough staff and beds to deal with the volume of patients they see. All of this makes them a place where malpractice can more easily occur.

Have what you think might be a medical emergency? Head to the local emergency department. Once there you may find yourself waiting along with many other sick or injured people for a doctor to see you. Not all of the people waiting will have real emergencies. Even among those with real…
Continue Reading Emergency Departments: Dangerous Places to Be