Medical Malpractice Blogs

Medical malpractice claims get a lot of attention in the media. When they do, it’s usually because there was a very large jury award and the number impresses people. Unfortunately, the reporting seldom goes as far into the reasons that the case was filed as it does into the size of the jury award. It’s important to understand that these cases usually are not at all frivolous. Here are four things to consider about medical negligence.

1. Some Doctors Are Awful

While many doctors will be sued and found blameless for malpractice, there are also doctors who get sued for it over and over again. Sometimes they switch states so that they can outrun their reputation. These doctors need to be held accountable for the harm that they cause and malpractice lawsuits are one way of holding them accountable.

2. It Doesn’t Drive Up Healthcare Costs

There has been a lot of talk about how malpractice claims drive up medical costs. Most of the information that seems to support this is specious at best. There is plenty of information that shows that malpractice suits do not drive up medical costs. One piece of evidence is the reporting that shows that Texas has had no decline in medical costs—and has had increases, in fact—since tort reform was passed.

3. It’s About the Victims

The victims of medical malpractice oftentimes suffer as much as do the victims of violent crime. They may end up disfigured, disabled, unable to work, permanently ill or suffer other types of grievous harm. When juries hand out large awards in these cases, it’s not because they hate the doctor; it’s because they understand the suffering the patient has been put through and oftentimes that the patient continues to endure.

4. it’s Not a Get Rich Quick Scheme

When people do get very large awards, they usually have very large expenses to go right along with those awards. In some cases, wrongful death is the reason that such large awards are given out and those cases are some of the most painful of all.

Malpractice suits are a way of leveling the playing field and holding doctors responsible for what they’ve done. There are plenty of cases out there where families and individuals have only been able to avoid bankruptcy because of having had a good malpractice lawyer at their side representing them in court.

Michigan medical malpractice lawyers will help you if you believe that you or family members have suffered injuries due to a medical error. The negligent medical provider may be liable for significant damages for the failure to provide appropriate treatment, especially when the injuries and damages caused by the improper treatment are substantial.

According to “The Safety Report” published by Tom Young, only 1 in 7 hospital medical errors are reported by hospital staff including some that caused patients to die. In addition, the Institute of Medicine found that as many as 98,000 people die every year from preventable medical errors costing $17.1 billion in 2008. There is no regulation being created to punish or instruct hospital staff for how they handle medical errors.
Medical errors, or medical malpractice in Michigan, that is caused by improper judgment or neglect include:

• Misdiagnosis
• Failure to identify the cause of illness in time
• Surgical errors
• Failure to follow up with the patient to see how they are doing
• Medication errors
• Severe bedsores
• Infections
• Delirium
• Excessive bleeding

The medical malpractice Michigan lawyers at Buckfire & Buckfire P.C. handle cases for victims of medical errors against doctors, hospitals, clinics, surgeons, and nurses. Medical malpractice claims are very difficult and take numerous years to settle. Family members who have lost a loved one in a medical malpractice, may also have means for a Michigan wrongful death lawsuit.

Due to Michigan’s statute of limitations, victims of malpractice should contact an experienced lawyer immediately to discuss their case. The experienced, top rated Michigan medical malpractice attorneys will discuss your case with you, review your medical records, and advise you whether you have a legitimate claim for medical negligence. Call Buckfire & Buckfire P.C. now at (800) 606-1717.

An article in the Seattle Times describes the difference in hospital treatments of uninsured or under-insured people in hospitals compared to those with full insurance.

Not having an insurance card can have hazardous effects on a patient’s health, even inside a hospital, as two recent studies show.

One study, conducted by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, focused on hospital mortality rates for several conditions for adults (ages 18-64) and found significant differences between those who had health insurance versus those who did not.

Findings:

* Uninsured heart-attack patients’ mortality rates were 52 percent higher than those of patients with private insurance.

* Hospital mortality rates for uninsured stroke patients were 49 percent higher than those with private insurance.

* Death rates from pneumonia were 21 percent higher among hospitalized patients covered through Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor, that those with private insurance.

The findings also include the fact that compared with privately insured patients, uninsured patients or those on Medicaid were generally younger, poorer, less likely to be white and more likely to be admitted through the hospital emergency department, which could mean that illness was more severe or could be the result of not having a regular source of care.

The study, based on an analysis of more than 150,000 hospital-discharge records for patients admitted in 2005 with one of the three diagnoses, was published in The Journal of Hospital Medicine.

The second study, conducted by emergency physicians at the University of Buffalo, NY, analyzed approximately 200,000 trauma patient records from 649 hospitals between 2001 and 2005.

Findings:

* The study found that uninsured patients were more likely to die from auto-accident and gunshot wounds than privately insured patients with similar injuries.

* However, the findings showed that Medicaid patients injured in auto-accidents actually had lower death rates than those with private coverage, suggesting that other factors besides insurance rates, are influencing the outcomes in trauma care.

As Dr. Dietrich Jehle, the primary author of the report, noted, emergency physicians generally don’t know the insurance status of trauma patients when they first arrive for treatment, however factors such as race and insurance status were significant in predicting which patients in the study would not survive.

Generally, uninsured adult patients have about a 25 percent greater mortality rate for all conditions compared with insured adults. In the case of auto accidents, the uninsured are also less likely to wear seat belts, more likely to drive older, less-safe cars and engage in other risky behaviors.

Jehle also pointed out that the uninsured are generally in poorer health, and thus less able to survive traumatic injury.

The results of the Buffalo study were presented in early June at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in Phoenix.

You can find more information about these studies at HealthFinder.gov.

Boston personal injury attorney Thomas M. Kiley concentrates on legal cases regarding health issues.

A recent story by the Associated Press revealed that Americans get most of their radiation not from cell phones, microwaves or airport scanners, but from going through medical scans.

While we do get some radiation from these and other sources, a huge part of it is due to too many medical tests.
Americans get the most medical radiation in the world, said the story, even more than people in other Western countries. Half of the most advanced procedures that use radiation in the world occur in the US, while the average American’s dose is six times higher than it was a couple of decades ago.

Part of the problem is that some Americans get over-tested for medical problems, or undergo multiple CT scans for different problems that didn’t require radiation tests in the past. CT scans, also known as super X-rays, give extremely detailed images, so we can understand the convenience they provide, even though they can be used for tests that do not require radiation, such as ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The overuse of radiation scans can be linked to the higher image quality of a CT scan as opposed to other tests which is so convenient to doctors, and the fear of malpractice lawsuits. Doctors would like to test everything to make sure they do not miss a heart attack or any other condition.

However, all this radiation poses latent danger that cannot be immediately felt, but can result in serious medical conditions and even cancer in the long run. One medical test involving X-rays is not life-threatening, but if you have several tests over a short time, the radiation dose absorbed by your body increases and with that the risk of cancer.

The increase in radiation levels leads to an increased risk of cancer.

It is mostly up to the patient to keep a track of the number radiation scans since doctors don’t necessarily count the previous tests before ordering a new one. The US regulates only the dose for mammograms – there are no federal rules on radiation dose for other tests.

This means that adjusting the dose from an adult to a child is left up to the medical centers performing the tests. It would not be illegal for a medical imaging center to scan a child with the same dose as it does an adult, even though children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults.

There are steps to improve the situation, like introducing or improving federal regulation on setting standard doses for CT scans, or requiring radiation device makers to print the radiation dose on each X-ray or other image so patients and doctors can see how much was given, AP reports.

Another solution would be to keep a medical record that will track radiation tests and doses from cradle to grave.

We look forward to these proposed changes taking place, hopefully in the near future, as it could greatly influence our health.

You can read the whole story here.

Also, find more information about CT scans and child brain injury here.

At least two patients at the Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, NH were injured by the da Vinci surgical robot, a $1.4 million machine named after Leonardo da Vinci, prompting an investigation of Intuitive Surgical Inc, the company that markets the robot, The Wall Street Journal reports.
 

According to the WSJ, the da Vinci robot is used in 853 US hospitals to perform minimally invasive surgery, though some experts think that in inexperienced hands, the robot might do more harm than good.

The da Vinci robot is a massive machine that came on the market in 2000. It has been employed in a range of surgeries, from removing cancerous prostates to more complex heart surgeries.
 
The Wentworth-Douglass hospital has used the da Vinci robot about 300 times in the last four years, and the WSJ reports that there is no evidence to suggest the there were caused by technical malfunctions. Surgeons who use the da Vinci on regular basis say the robot is technologically sound. However, it requires considerable practice, and according to some experts, the usage of 300 times at the small Dover hospital was not enough to master it.
 
The WSJ reports that surgeon inexperience could be the problem. At least two surgeons at Wentworth-Douglass told the board of trustees that they did not want to use the da Vinci since it was not need at a hospital of its size. One of them, Dr. Robert Lambert, told the WSJ that pressure to use da Vinci was one of the reasons he eventually left the hospital.

Other Wentworth-Douglass medical staff members were critical of the training they received with the device, saying it was insufficient. Also, four urologists resisted using the robot without more training, and three of them eventually left the hospital, the WSJ reports.

According to the WSJ report, some surgeons have questioned the way da Vinci is marketed. Intuitive Surgical promotes the robot as a way for hospitals to increase revenues and market share. However, one study published in the Journal of Urology reports that a hospital needs to do at least 520 surgeries a year with the robot to bring its costs in line with traditional surgery.

The injuries at Wentworth-Douglass include one patient who was so badly injured that she needed four additional procedures to repair the damage. Also, in earlier robotic surgeries, two patients suffered lacerated bladders.

The personal injury attorneys at The Kiley Law Group are dedicated to helping the victims of:

• Car, motorcycle, truck, van or bus accident
• Single vehicle accidents such as SUV or 15-passenger van rollovers
• Pedestrian accidents such as a hit and run
• Defective products such as ineffective airbags or seatbelts, prescription drugs with unpublicized side-effects, or hazardous children’s toys
• Child injury and child abuse such as negligence
• Birth injuries such as trauma during labor or cerebral palsy.

We Serve Clients Across the State of Massachusetts & Salem, NH

The firm’s headquarters are in Andover, MA and serves the following cities in Massachusetts: Boston, Danvers, Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, Methuen, Middleton, Reading, and Salem, MA and Salem, New Hampshire.

Massachusetts personal injury lawyer, Thomas M. Kiley, is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association and is a respected member of the American Association for Justice and the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys.

In today’s prescription happy world, there is usually a pill for anything and everything. Start taking too many and you could end up with symptoms or side effects that could be masking the real problem. You might not even know if the symptoms you are experiencing are from your medications or symptoms of a new medical issue.

It has been shown that some medications can actually be responsible for causing certain diseases in patients. In some instances, doctors do not attribute these symptoms to the medication being used by the patient and create a false diagnose in response.

Visit our library to learn more about the effects of misdiagnoses and/or delayed diagnosis, to include medication errors.

No one likes the thought of a misdiagnosis; however, some patients never really know that they weren’t properly diagnosed in the first place. Unfortunately it is usually during an autopsy when most misdiagnoses are finally revealed.

When an autopsy is conducted, there are clinical findings. Doctors can compare the autopsy report with the diagnoses the patient has in their medical chart to see if they agree. If they don’t match up, then a misdiagnosis has occurred.

Unfortunately, information from recent studies indicate that the incidences of autopsies are decreasing, which will limit the opportunity to measure misdiagnosis. It is important however, to stop misdiagnoses from occurring before someone ends up in the morgue.

Visit our library to learn more about misdiagnoses and the dangers of failure to diagnose a disease.

Treating the pain of burn victims is a tricky situation. Not only does the burn patient experience pain simply from the burn, but often the cleaning and redressing of the wound will cause even more pain.

Current narcotics administered via IV may be woefully inadequate. Information on WebMd.com indicates that more research needs to be conducted on pain management in burn victims.

Other treatment methods may include placing the burn injury victim in a special burn recovery bed which can evenly distribute the patient’s body weight. This treatment can help prevent burn victims from suffering further injury due to painful pressure points or bed sores.

After seeking medical treatment, burn victims should immediately contact an experienced burn injury attorney to protect their rights. You may be entitled to compensation for your medical bills, lost wages, and other expenses.

Visit our library to learn more about burn injuries and burn pain management.

According to Wrong Diagnosis.com, “The failure to diagnose a condition is one of the most common types of misdiagnosis.” One condition that is routinely not diagnosed is a sleep disorder.

In the same report it goes on to state that sleep disorders are the number two condition that is failed to be diagnosed. It is estimated that roughly 40 million people could have sleep disorders that haven’t been properly diagnosed.

Considering that sleep is an important factor of a person’s health, this under-diagnosis or lack of diagnosis is completely unacceptable and puts people at greater risk of accidents and other medical conditions due to possible sleep deprivation.

Visit our library to gather more information about the dangers of failure to diagnose and medical malpractice.

Misdiagnoses and mistakes happen often. Doctors get busy and sometimes they don’t remember all the details of a patient’s case or have all the necessary information for a complete diagnosis. So when the doctor says grandpa or grandma has Alzheimer’s, it may not really be so.

Some medications can mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. It is important to make sure your doctor is aware of all the medications a patient is currently taking to ensure an accurate diagnosis.

In situations like these, with such a serious and life-long diagnosis like Alzheimer’s disease, family members should request, and if necessary insist, on a second opinion to confirm the diagnosis. The second opinion should include a medication review to be completely thorough.

Learn more about misdiagnoses or failure to diagnose.