Articles Posted in Hospital Malpractice

A Maryland jury awarded the wife and two children of a 59-year-old man $2.5 million in damages following his untimely death from medical malpractice at Montgomery General Hospital in 2007. The lawsuit alleged that the doctor attending to the man at Montgomery General failed was negligent in failing to recognize and diagnose that he was suffering from “hemorrhagic shock” and treat the same. A copy of the article regarding the settlement can be found here.

The man’s death occurred two days after he fell and fractured his pelvis. The family alleged that the primary care physician, who was the sole defendant in the medical malpractice case, did not realize that the man was suffering from internal bleeding. The family believes that had the doctor treated this condition when he first examined him, he could have saved the man’s life. Instead, the man ultimately died from multiple organ failure due to the internal bleeding.

While the primary care physician argued that the man died as a result of a side effect to medication that restricted his intake of oxygen, this theory was discredited because no mention was made of any such complication on the death certificate.

Peninsula Regional Medical Center, located in Salisbury, Maryland is the latest Maryland hospital involved in medical malpractice suits arising from unnecessary stent procedures.

Last month, cardiologist John R. McLean, M.D. was convicted of health care fraud offenses after implanting cardiac stents in more than 100 patients who did not need them. McLean was found to have performed unnecessary tests and made false entries in medical records when he submitted insurance claims for the stent procedures.

Despite its attempt last year to be dismissed from the case involving McLean, which was denied by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Peninsula Regional Medical Center agreed to pay $1.8 million to settle the case in early August. The allegations set forth in the suits against Peninsula Regional Medical Center were that it failed to act to prevent the unnecessary procedures even though it were aware of McLean’s behavior. There were fifty-two parties named as plaintiffs. Additionally, under the settlement, the hospital must also repay the money it received from federal health benefit programs while the unnecessary medical procedures amounting to fraud were going on.

Baltimore Washington Medical Center, located in Anne Arundel County Maryland, was recently fined by the Maryland Department of Environment (MDE) a result of medical malpractice. The settlement agreement reached between the MDE and Baltimore Washington Medical Center stemmed from an error in which the hospital administered an improper dose of radiation. The MDE became involved because radiation doses are supposed to be limited to levels as low as reasonably achievable, pursuant to the Maryland Radiation Act.

As a result of the self-reporting system, the hospital notified officials, as well as the patient, about the error in which the patient was exposed to radiation inconsistent with the treatment plan. While it’s likely that the medical mistake will not result in any negative effect on the patient, radiation doses that are too high can kill cells while those that are too low can damage or alter the DNA within the cells.

As a result of this mistake, and in addition to the $14,000 fine, hospital officials will have a radiological health official present at each of their next four radiation safety meetings to make sure the hospital is in compliance and to provide guidance if necessary.

In a Maryland medical malpractice case in which the plaintiff seeks punitive damages against a doctor for conducting an unnecessary procedure, is the employer hospital vicariously liable for punitive damages?

In general, Maryland has uniformly applied a broad rule for punitive damages and held an employer vicariously liable for punitive damages for its employee’s tortious acts. Embrey v. Holly, 293 Md. 128, 137-38, 442 A.2d 966, 971 (1982). The nature of punitive damages is such that a punitive damage award may be apportioned between multiple wrongdoers depending upon the degree of culpability and the pecuniary status of each. Embrey, 293 Md. at 141, 442 A.2d at 973. In Embrey, which was a defamation case, the Court held that it was entirely proper to permit a jury to apportion punitive damages among multiple defendants, the speaker of the defamatory language and his employer radio station. Id. at 143, 442 A.2d at 974.
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In 2002, ten years after being born with among other things, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and developmental delay, a newborn, through her guardian, filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against University of Maryland Medical System’s University of Maryland hospital. The newborn, through her guardian, alleged that hospital was negligent because it made the mother wait before conducting an emergency c-section, which resulted in severe injury to newborn. A jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City initially entered a verdict in favor of hospital. On appeal, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case to the Circuit Court. A copy the judicial opinion regarding the case can be found here.

The underlying issue in this medical malpractice case was a factual dispute regarding culpability on the part of the University of Maryland Hospital for the newborn’s injuries. The mother stated that after arriving at the University of Maryland hospital, she waited for approximately five hours, without any treatment, before the c-section was performed. The University of Maryland hospital, on the other hand, denied that it was negligent and stated that the woman did not arrive at the hospital until minutes before the emergency c-section was performed.

The c-section only took three minutes to perform but when the newborn was delivered, she was without a heartbeat, she was having difficulty breathing, and she had low Apgar scores. Apparently, a placental abruption had caused the need for the emergency c-section, and the newborn’s disabilities. The doctors at the University of Maryland hospital inserted a breathing tube and placed the child on a ventilation machine, after which she was admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The surviving family of a 37 year old Alabama man has won a $3 million jury verdict from a local hospital. The man died a few days after surgery for a duodenal ulcer. The family claimed that the man bled to death after negligent surgery, and negligent follow-up care after discharge. Specifically, the family alleged that the man’s ulcer, a perforation in the first section of the small intestine, was large and not treatable by the standard surgical procedures. The family also alleged that the man was sent home after surgery with a very low blood count and was not adequately examined by his doctor before being discharged. A copy of an article regarding the case can be found here.

I have handled many negligent surgery cases. The key to success in such cases is obtaining all of the relevant medical records, reviewing them carefully, getting a good expert witness and backing the case up with medical literature where appropriate. Also important in such a case is reviewing the medical records to make sure the post-operative care is within the standard of care and not negligent. Usually, this is done by checking the patient’s vital signs (heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure and temperature), and drainage.

I once handled a case a somewhat similar case of a woman who came into a hospital emergency room with a bleeding ulcer and bleed to death (called exsanguination) within hours. She kept bleeding in the hospital as evidenced by her blood test results which indicated that she was experiencing severe internal bleeding (her hematocrit level kept dropping), but the doctors failed to stop the bleeding. Eventually, her blood pressure crashed and they gave her many units of blood, but by then it was too late to do surgery and she died. That should not happen where there is enough time to operate and stop the bleeding.

An Ohio jury has awarded $1.5 million dollars to a in a medical malpractice case against two doctors. The jury found that a doctor committed malpractice during a bone marrow biopsy in which a nerve was nicked and an artery was damaged. Apparently, the problem went undiscovered for five days and doctors had to remove two large hematomas from the hip and pelvis. The other doctor was called two days after the procedure but declined to examine the patient. The negligence caused the man to lose he use of his right leg below the knee, and resulted in chronic pain. A copy of an article regarding the case can be found here.

As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I have handled a number of medical malpractice cases involving vascular injuries and nerve injuries. These can be difficult cases because the defense is that the procedure is done relatively blindly and injury to a blood vessels and nerves and this can happen, but there are procedures to minimize the risk of such injuries and they clearly were not followed in this case. Moreover, the failure of the subsequent treating doctor to see the patient was clear malpractice.

A Connecticut medical malpractice case has been settled for $5.25 million in favor of a woman whose left leg had to be amputated as a result of complications from spinal surgery performed at a local hospital. The lawsuit alleged that a doctor performed an elective “anterior transabdominal approach to the lumbosacral spine,” and then her doctor and the hospital staff failed to properly take care of her in the intensive care unit, causing the loss of the leg. While in the ICU, the woman suffered intra-abdominal hemorrhaging, post-operative bleeding, abdominal wounds, and other severe complications that the hospital staff did not appropriately diagnose or treat, resulting in a gangrenous lower leg that resulted in an above-the-knee amputation. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I have handled a number of medical malpractice cases involving failed back surgery. Usually, they are caused by improper technique during the surgery, but sometimes it is the post-operative monitoring that is deficient. During the post-operative period, the surgeon and the nurses at the hospital must be alert for changes in the patient’s condition that require further testing and procedures. Usually, simply monitoring the patient’s oxygenation rate, pulse, breathing, responsiveness and blood work is sufficient. These functions usually tell how well a patient is doing. Any abnormalities must be promptly investigated. To see some of the cases I have handled, click here.