Articles Posted in Hospital Malpractice

A number of news organizations are reporting today that lawyers in Baltimore are racing to the courthouse to file lawsuits against Dr. Nikita Levy and Johns Hopkins Hospital. When I heard that, I sadly chuckled. The only thing that these lawyers know now is what the media is reporting. There is no other information available from Dr. Levy’s family, Johns Hopkins, the Baltimore County Police who executed the search warrant, the Baltimore City Police who are leading the investigation or the FBI which is assisting the Baltimore City Police with the forensic evaluation of the electronic evidence.

My firm and I are taking a different approach than rushing to the courthouse; we believe that it is better to conduct a thorough and detailed investigation rather than run the courthouse simply to be the first to file a civil lawsuit. Accordingly, I issued a pre-lawsuit deposition notice and subpoena to Johns Hopkins today seeking to determine what it knows and where documents and other evidence are located. A copy of the Deposition Notice can be found here. While I believe that ultimately a lawsuit is likely in these cases, such a lawsuit should be based upon a through analysis of the facts and not media reports.

Today, we also joined with a leading Maryland victims service organization, The Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, Inc., to advocate for victims of this travesty. A copy of the letter can be found here.

Johns Hopkins Hospital researchers recently uncovered a startling figure regarding hospital medical malpractice: 40,500 intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients die each year as a result of misdiagnosis, as opposed to life threatening conditions that cannot be treated.

The study, released September 26, 2012, found that patients in the ICU are fifty percent more likely to be misdiagnosed than patients in other parts of a hospital. Further, according to the study, the most common misdiagnosis involves the vascular system, often resulting in heart attack or stroke.

This is an important study because it shows that there is malpractice at many of Maryland’s hospitals. It also shows that even some of the best hospitals in the state, such as Johns Hopkins Hospital or the University of Maryland Medical Center, are still striving to improve quality of care and reduce the incidence of medical malpractice and wrongful death

After pushing hospitals to replace paper records with electronic ones, many policymakers now believe the next step in improving the quality of medical care is to reduce the number of errors made by doctors. One study recently found that putting a child’s photo in their electronic hospital chart reduced one type of medical error – a patient getting a test or treatment intended for someone else due to a doctor’s misplaced orders. An article about the study can be found here.

The Children’s Hospital of Colorado found that misplaced orders were the second-most common reason that patients received care not meant for them in a quality improvement program conducted in 2009. The hospital reacted to this result by changing its computer system so that each order for a test or treatment required an affirmative “verification” that the order was aligned with the correct patient which included a photo of the child.

The results reflected the success of this policy change: in 2010, the hospital had twelve incidents in which a child received care intended for another patient because of misplaced orders, but after implementing the photo policy, that number fell to three.

Research conducted by Johns Hopkins doctors has found that an estimated forty percent of hospital websites advertise the use of robotic surgery as superior to conventional surgery. However, there is a no evidence to suggest these statements are true. In particular, hospitals often exaggerate the benefits associated with robotic surgery while ignoring the risks.

A copy of the article about the study can be found here.

Johns Hopkins researchers warn that the lack of candor in promotional materials is potentially dangerous for various reasons. Much of the positive advertisement is provided by the surgical robots’ manufacturers, as opposed to independent analysis by doctors or hospitals. This is a concern because the general public relies on hospitals, including their websites, to provide honest and complete information. Essentially, many would consider the material on a hospital’s website to be as if it was coming directly from a physician.