Wouldn’t it be nice to invest in a business proposition in which you make money no matter how well or poorly the business does? Sweet deals like that are hard to come by unless you are private equity investing in hospitals. Steward Health Care is a prime example of what can happen and how many lives can be lost and patients and workers hurt when private equity employs its financial tricks to assure it makes money no matter what. You can read all about it here.

Steward Health Care is no more. It declared bankruptcy in May of 2024…
Continue Reading Heads, I Win. Tails, You Lose.

Events in my legal practice are once again reminding me that some doctors will do or say anything to keep from having their mistakes revealed. They will lie to their patients. They will falsify their records. They will deny their mistakes when confronted. They will take advantage of the good will of the public and the high regard in which the public holds doctors. They do a lot of damage.

When clients come to see me and their case looks promising, I usually ask them to get their medical records. With the changes in federal law, it is quicker and…
Continue Reading The Dishonest Doctor

Almost everyone reading this has a hidden power that very few of us use. It is the power to get access to our electronic medical records. Federal law requires that medical records be available to patients. Most providers have concluded that electronic records are the most efficient way to meet this requirement. Federal regulations that took effect in 2021 require that all healthcare organizations give patients access to their electronic medical records. This gives rise to your hidden power.

It is often said that “Knowledge is power.” That is certainly true when it comes to your medical records. You can…
Continue Reading Use Your Hidden Power

This is a recurring theme in health care in this country. We spend billions of dollars caring for health problems afflicting the less fortunate members of our society. Very often, we could avoid or at least reduce these health problems with a little preventive care earlier in the process. That has once again proven to be the case with preterm births.

The typical term of a pregnancy is considered to be 40 weeks. Any birth before 37 weeks of gestation is considered to be a preterm birth. The earlier the birth, the worse it is for the baby.

Preterm births…
Continue Reading Pay Me Now Or Pay Me (More) Later

As the old saying goes, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” There is nothing in medicine that does not involve some risk to the patient. Everything from aspirin to heart surgery carries some risk. This is true of vaccines as well. As with everything else in medicine, the benefits of the treatment must outweigh the risk. The vaccines available today have been tested and found to be of substantial benefit and to possess only a low risk of harm.

We live in a miraculous world in which we have developed vaccines to keep us from getting many…
Continue Reading Vaccines Are Important But Do Carry Some Risks

As I have often written, large verdicts in malpractice cases make news, but the public rarely hears about what happens after the jury returns its verdict and goes home. There are always post-trial motions to overturn or reduce the verdict. If these are not successful, or even if they are, defendants will file appeals trying to get the verdict thrown out and a new trial granted. This was the plan of some Georgia malpractice defense lawyers and their insurance company client when the dentist they were representing was hit with a $10M verdict in a dental malpractice case. Things did…
Continue Reading Be Careful What You Wish For

Medicine is an art, not a science. No doctor or other health care provider can or will guarantee a good result. Sometimes, even in the best hands, there is a poor outcome. Some poor outcomes, however, are the result of below-standard care. These are the outcomes which may lead to a successful medical malpractice case. If you or a loved one have had a bad outcome, here are the questions you should be asking.

The first question is whether what happened to you or your loved one was a surprise? While even routine procedures or treatments with expected good results…
Continue Reading Do I Have A Medical Malpractice Case?

We have all heard the old adage about people voting with their feet. It means that the situation in which they find themselves is so intolerable that they are leaving as a way of escaping it. According to the Wall Street Journal, that is what many of the sickest Medicare Advantage patients are doing. They are leaving Medicare Advantage and returning to Traditional Medicare because they cannot get the treatment they need from the Advantage plans. They are leaving at twice the rate of enrollees who are not extremely sick. When they land back on Traditional Medicare, it shifts…
Continue Reading They Are Voting With Their Feet

Sadly, it appears our healthcare delivery system is in a perpetual state of crisis. Millions of our citizens live in rural areas served by small hospitals and those hospitals are closing at an ever accelerating rate. At the same time, mismanagement and corporate greed are forcing the closure of hospitals in metropolitan areas as well. Venture capital is buying up the practices of individual doctors and groups of doctors and jacking up prices as soon as they have the economic power to do so. Across the healthcare landscape, costs are going through the roof. This cannot go on much longer.
Continue Reading The Healthcare Wars: News From The Front

Unless you have been hiding in a cave, you have noticed the long bull run in the stock market. Over the last ten years, the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 have both more than doubled. That kind of bull market cannot last forever.

So why am I talking about the stock market? What does the stock market have to do with the looming malpractice insurance crisis? In a word: Everything.

Malpractice insurance companies compete with one another for business. The primary method of competition is through the price of coverage. The coverages are pretty…
Continue Reading The Looming Malpractice Insurance Crisis

The following is a summary of notable changes to the rules governing civil practice in Arizona’s state courts based on orders issued by the Arizona Supreme Court following its August 2024 Rules Agenda.  They become effective January 1, 2025. 

Rules of Civil Procedure

Rule 7.2 – Good Faith Consultation

            A straightforward amendment to Rule 7.2(a) reminds parties of their obligation to confer before filing a motion in limine.  Rule 7.2(a) now requires a party to file a good-faith consultation certificate under rule 7.2(h) concurrently with any motion in limine.  Rules likely will continue to be amended to explicitly require…
Continue Reading 2025 Changes to Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure

It is that time of the year again. The big insurance companies are flooding the airwaves with advertisements urging seniors to take advantage of all of the wonderful extra benefits they can receive, if they only sign up for the company’s Medicare Advantage plan. And who doesn’t want free, extra benefits? Be careful, if you are considering joining a Medicare Advantage plan. There is a reason these companies can afford to offer extra benefits.

There are lots of complaints about Medicare Advantage plans. They are owned and operated by the largest health insurance companies. They have used questionable practices to…
Continue Reading Look Before You Leap

As I have remarked from time to time, doctors and nurses are human beings like the rest of us.  All of us are flawed in some way or other.  Should we really be surprised to discover that some doctors and nurses do things that deliberately harm patients?  Probably not, but murder?  Here are some stories about the most horrible of crimes.  They should keep you up at night.

A nurse in Italy administered lethal injections to 38 of her patients because they or their families annoyed her.  Sometimes she took selfies of herself with the recently departed.  She was described…
Continue Reading Murder Most Foul!