I recently visited the portion of the American Medical Association’s web site devoted to reforming state liability laws involving medical malpractice. The AMA is an organization of doctors which advocates on their behalf. The AMA characterizes its efforts at malpractice reform as a win-win for everyone. It is good for doctors and good for patients.

The “reform” proposals advocated for by the AMA come in a number of different flavors. They want to cover all possible bases. Some proposals would limit the amount of money a patient could recover for damages resulting…
Continue Reading The Hypocrisy Of The American Medical Association

At 5:30 in the evening on Super Bowl Sunday of this year, a eighteen-month-old toddler was found face down in a swimming pool in the East Valley.  The child was pulled out of the pool and EMT’s rushed him to Mercy Gilbert Hospital where the emergency room doctor declared the child to be dead at 6:20 p.m.  The doctor declared the child to be dead despite the parents and the police officers, who had accompanied the family to the hospital, telling the medical personnel that the child was still breathing.  The medical personnel dismissed these claims and a nurse informed…
Continue Reading A Shocking Arizona Case

I recently stumbled upon a social media site on which two nurses were discussing submissions to their question, “What is the biggest nursing mistake you have ever seen?” The answers are disturbing but no surprise to anyone who has looked into the amount of medical malpractice out there. These are the things doctors and nurses talk about among themselves when they don’t believe any of the public is listening.

Among the mistakes submitted to these nurses:

A nurse was ordered to give a patient a stool softener. The softener came in…
Continue Reading What Goes On Behind The Veil Of Secrecy?

Laparoscope is the name given to a tool that enables doctors to perform surgery inside the body through only a small opening. This causes much less trauma to the patient and offers the promise of quicker healing.

As you can see from the illustration, after the small incision is made, the abdomen is filled with a gas to inflate it and make it easier for the surgeon to see. A TV camera is inserted into the opening as are tools that the surgeon can manipulate from outside.

Since the invention of the laparoscope, it…
Continue Reading The Laparoscope: A Wonderful Device

Medicare Advantage plans were intended to save money for taxpayers and to offer more flexible benefits to enrollees than Traditional Medicare. A win-win, if ever there was one. Perhaps not surprisingly, the plans have done neither as the insurance companies offering them have gamed the system to increase their profits. The taxpayers have been getting screwed as have the advantage plan participants.

Medicare Advantage plans often offer additional benefits not found in Traditional Medicare. This is a big selling point and is frequently cited by enrollees as the reason for their choice of a…
Continue Reading Another Disadvantage To Medicare Advantage

A thank you to the New York Times for this story.

Emergency Department physicians have seen it all. Broken bones, wounds, and accidents of nearly every type are all daily occurrences for them. Some things they see over and over are easily preventable and avoiding them may keep you out of their departments.

HASTY CUTTING. We have all been there. We are in the kitchen and we want to cut a bagel or an avocado and we are in a hurry. We take a knife, maybe not the sharpest one…
Continue Reading Six Things ER Doctors Wish You Would Avoid

I recently had a doctor’s appointment. My doctor was mentoring a new medical student and he joined us in the examining room. My doctor, knowing I represent patients in malpractice cases, asked if I had any advice for the medical student. One of the things I told him was to be careful with the electronic medical records.

Electronic medical record companies have a product they want to sell to hospitals and doctors. They almost always claim that their record keeping system is easy to use and will save the doctors and nurses a lot…
Continue Reading Cut And Paste Medical Records

It is a fact of life that we all must leave at some point. Many of our deaths will occur in hospitals or while we are under the care of a medical provider. Sometimes those deaths will be expected while at other times they may be completely unexpected. When there is an unexpected death of a loved one during medical treatment, you should ask yourself why and whether the death might be in some way related to the medical care. Maybe it was caused by the medical care. Maybe it occurred because the loved one did not receive the care…
Continue Reading What To Do Following A Possible Malpractice Death

Doctors love to complain that they are the victims of a legal system gone haywire. To hear them tell it, they practice great medicine, but are deluged with frivolous lawsuits provoked by greedy lawyers. In point of actual fact, the number of malpractice claims is far, far less than the instances of medical malpractice that seriously injure patients. Only a small fraction of the victims of medical malpractice ever make a claim, much less file suit.

The curtain was pulled back on the subject of medical malpractice by a group of respected researchers for…
Continue Reading How Much Malpractice Is There?

Outpatient care is any care received outside the hospital. It is a far more frequent occurrence than hospital care. On average, one in four Americans receives outpatient care each month. Like the hospital setting, it is a hotbed of malpractice. Just how much, some researchers in Massachusetts decided to try and find out.

CRICO is the insurance and risk management program for all of the Harvard medical institutions and their affiliates. This includes 32 hospitals and 325 other health care organizations. CRICO is very interested in reducing the risk of patient injuries and has…
Continue Reading Malpractice In The Outpatient Setting

The answer is money. The question is why is our health care delivery system so expensive and inefficient.

We are Number One. We are Number One in the world in the amount we pay per person for health care. Where we are not Number One is in our health care outcomes. Sadly, we are way down the list, despite how much we spend. The Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit dedicated to improving health care in the United States, is over 100 years old. It regularly compares our health care system to those of the rest of the developed world. One of …
Continue Reading The Answer Is Money

When a patient is admitted to the hospital, a lot of bad things can happen and often do. Many studies have been done to try and identify those factors that increase the risk of an in-hospital death. Some of the factors which have been identified are ones over which we have little control. For example, males have a higher risk of death as do lower income individuals. Older age and the presence of co-morbidities are also factors which increase the likelihood of an in-hospital death and over which we have no control. Perhaps unsurprisingly, being admitted to the hospital on…
Continue Reading Stay Out Of The Hospital This Weekend – Or Any Weekend, For That Matter

From time to time I analyze large medical malpractice verdicts to see what lessons can be learned. They usually have some common characteristics. Here is a recent one out of New York state that reinforces my belief about the elements necessary for a really large verdict.

The plaintiff was a 60 year-old man who worked full time as an electrical mechanic at a local airport on Long Island. He had been having back problems and was receiving what was intended to be a routine injection of a steroid into the epidural space…
Continue Reading Analysis Of A Recent Large Malpractice Verdict