Articles Posted in Hospital Malpractice

The New York Times has just published a very interesting article on Long-term acute care hospitals and the medical malpractice / substandard care that goes on in many of them. According to the Times, these hospitals, have been springing up across the country since the 1980s, and specialize in the long-term care of seriously ill patients. Most of these hospitals are for-profit, which means that there is a strong incentive to provide minimal care. Once long term acute care hospital chain drew increased scrutiny, Select Medical Corporation, which reportedly had a rate about four times that of regular hospitals for serious violations of Medicare rules. According to the Times, Medicare inspection reports of many of these hospitals showed preventable patient injuries and deaths and inadequate staff numbers with high turnover. A copy of the article can be found here.

As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice cases involving care of the chronically ill. These patients are at risk for severe bed sores, major infections, falls and death. These people usually are almost totally dependent on others for their care. That makes it even more outrageous when they are not properly care for due to the profit motive.

A Pittsburgh jury has awarded $2.3 million to a woman in a medical malpractice case against a hospital which arose from a complete abdominal hysterectomy she underwent there. The woman went to the hospital to deliver a child and was improperly discharged with a high white blood count that gave her a serious infection requiring a hysterectomy one week later. The woman’s doctor claimed that he never received notice of the abnormal blood work, but the hospital claimed he had. While the blood work results were i the chart, no one appears to have paid attention to them before the woman was discharged. The verdict was for the woman’s pain and suffering.

As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice cases involving abnormal blood work that was never communicated to the right person or acted upon properly. In one case, a woman who was being transferred from a hospital had a severely low electrolyte level but no one acted on it before she was transferred and she died. In another case, a child had a very low white blood count with what is called a left shift, indicating a severe infection. But the hospital sent him home where he went into arrest and died. Cases like these, where abnormal lab reports are in the medical records but no one responds, are inexcusable cases of medical malpractice. To see some of the cases I have handled, click here.

A New York man has been awarded $19.2 million in a medical negligence case against a hospital in New York City. The man was admitted to the hospitalcomplaining of severe back pain. The hospital’s staff negligently failed to diagnose a spinal abscess, which is an infection on the spinal cord, which quickly led to his permanent paralysis. Apparently, the hospital did not conduct an MRI or CAT scan until two weeks after thje man was admitted, when the damage had already been done. A neurosurgeon tried to reverse some of that damage, but it was too late. The man has been paralyzed from his chest down ever since.

As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I frequently handle medical malpractice cases in Baltimore, Maryland and other places involving paralysis. To see some of the cases I have handled, click here .

In a case like this, it is important to prove violations of the standard of care and that the violation caused the person’s paralysis. In such cases, we frequently use neurosurgery experts, neuroradiology experts, infectious disease experts, etc. One of the most frequent reasons for people to sue in such a situation is to obtain compensation that allows them to obtain better medical care than they or their health insurer otherwise would provide, and to gain independence. That is exactly what happened in this case. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

Los Angeles County has finally acknowledged for the first time in a medical malpractice case that a woman who died shortly after writhing in pain for nearly an hour on the waiting room floor of a county hospital been saved if she had been properly treated. The woman was captured on security videotape as a janitor mopped around her and a triage nurse dismissed her complaints early one morning in May 2007. The woman’s death helped precipitate the closure of the hospital’s emergency room and inpatient care after federal regulators determined that staffers had failed to deliver a minimum standard of care.

The woman’s boyfriend, who had accompanied her to the emergency room and called 911 from a nearby pay phone after no one would help, recently was offered a $250,000 settlement by county supervisors. A separate lawsuit against the county filed by her adult children could potentially prove far more costly and is considered more likely to go to trial. The children have asked for $1 million for each minute she was denied treatment — $45 million in all.

The indifference shown to the woman’s suffering made national news and outraged county supervisors and national health authorities as well as area residents. A federal report issued last year concluded that six staff members, including a nurse and two nursing assistants, saw or walked past the woman but did nothing. She died from a perforated bowel shortly after she was arrested on an outstanding warrant instead of being treated.

A California jury has awarded $8.5 million to the widow of a man who died on the day a surgeon was going to discharge him from the hospital. Because of limits on medical malpractice cases, the woman probably will receive only $1.6 million of that amount.

The 49-year-old man broke six ribs in a motorcycle accident in 2002. At the trial, his wife’s attorneys argued that a doctor should have more closely monitored him after x-rays showed he had one gallon of liquid backed up in his stomach four hours before he died, and he had previously been resuscitated. The man died after choking on his own vomit.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland involving premature hospital discharge / improper discharge from a hospital. These cases have ranged from failure to properly diagnose and treat infections / sepsis, failure to diagnose and treat pulmonary embolisms, failure to properly diagnose and treat surgical complications, failure to diagnose and treat heart attacks, failure to diagnose and properly treat brain injuries, etc. Sometimes these cases arise soon before discharge or right after. These cases are always tragic because the patient and family trust the doctor and hospital to do the right thing and, as a result, they are usually given a false sense of security in the planning of the discharge or the actual discharge itself. Many times, the patient and/or family’s concerns are dismissed and they are reassured that everything will be fine and the patient will get better. A death within days of a planned or actual discharge should always be carefully investigated.

A Pittsburgh jury has found that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at Shadyside was negligent in a patient’s death and awarded $2.5 million for wrongful death. The case alleged that a young man died after a brain abscess was not treated in time by the staff at the hospital. The jury actually issued a statement saying, “It is our belief that UPMC Shadyside’s policies, culture, and lack of competent supervision resulted in the death of Michael Rettger.” The young man, who was an accountant, was in West Virginia in November 2003 to perform an audit of another hospital when he began vomiting and reporting a headache. The man then was admitted to that hospital, and a CT scan and MRI revealed a large, swelling mass in his brain. The man was transferred to UPMC Shadyside in order to be closer to home.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland, and in Washington, D.C., involving the failure of hospitals to timely diagnose and treat patients with brain and other conditions. Of course, one has to obtain the medical records and retain proper experts in these cases, such as neurosurgeons and radiologists, to determine what really happened. But what is also critical in these type of cases is to obtain the hospital’s written standards to determine how the hospital expected its people to act, and to then take the depositions of the people most involved with the care and treatment of the patient, to understand what they did and whether they complied with hospital policies.

We handle cases like these all of the time in my practice.

A Florida jury has awarded $12 million for the death of a premature baby caused by medical malpractice. The parents contended in their suit that the hospital negligently accepted a transfer of the baby from another hospital, but did not have the appropriate specialists on its staff to deal with their baby’s infection. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

In Maryland and the District of Columbia, most hospitals can be classified as academic medical centers (like the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the University of Maryland Medical Center, George Washington University Medical Center or Georgetown University Hospital, etc.) or community hospitals (like Sinai Hospital, Harbor Hospital, Shady Grove Adventist, etc.). Maryland and District of Columbia hospitals also are labeled according to what type of trauma center they are.

The concept of a trauma center was developed at the University of Maryland Medical Center in the 1960s and 1970s by heart surgeon and shock researcher R Adams Cowley, who founded what became the Shock Trauma Center. Trauma centers in the United States are ranked by the American College of Surgeons (ACS), from level I (comprehensive service) to level III (limited-care). The different levels refer to the type of resources available in a trauma center and the number of patients admitted yearly.