GI Joe Star Filing Medical Malpractice Suit

GI Joe’s General Hawk, a.k.a. Dennis Quaid, has filed a lawsuit after his twin children experienced an accidental overdose. Sadly, he is not the only celebrity to bring charges of medical malpractice.

GI Joe’s General Hawk, a.k.a. Dennis Quaid, has filed a lawsuit after his twin children experienced a massive overdose of the drug Heparin because the manufacturer, Baxter Healthcare Corp. (BHC), allegedly packaged the dosages wrong. BHC manufactures products to aid in the treatment of “hemophilia, immune disorders, infectious diseases, kidney disease, trauma, and other chronic and acute medical conditions.” According to recent reports, the Quaids are suing BHC for medical malpractice.

Dennis Quaid

Unfortunately, Quaid is not the only celeb who has experienced the devastating affects of medical negligence. Rapper Kanye West lost his mother in 2007 after a plastic surgery procedure led to her death. Dr. Jan Adams, the surgeon who performed Ms. West’s operation, has since surrendered his medical license, and has since come under scrutiny for two criminal convictions.

Donda West, Kanye West's mom allegedly a victim of medical malpractice

Dr. Adams has been arrested multiple times in the past on DUI charges and most recently spent time in court when it was discovered that he had not paid judgment for a previous cosmetic surgery malpractice case. The doctor continues to proclaim his innocence with regard to Donda West’s death, and the California Medical Board is still investigating the case.

Other examples include the medical malpractice lawsuit filed by the wife of former Dallas Cowboys running back Ron Springs against two Texas doctors she accuses of letting him slip into a coma, leaving him mentally and physically incapacitated, and a case brought by Ed McMahon when doctors failed to take necessary x-rays and diagnose a neck fracture after he fell at a friend’s residence.

Although these cases are all unfortunate, state medical boards and credentialing organizations play a key role in ensuring that practitioners are well-trained and cognizant of best practices. Consumers considering a cosmetic or reconstructive surgery procedure should look for a doctor who is board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery to ensure they get the highest quality of care by a doctor who has specific training in these types of procedures.

Reported by The Plastic Surgery Planet

Hospital Horror Cover Ups: Hospital Records Were Sometimes Falsified to Cover Up Medical Malpractice

Last Sunday, NY Daily News posted an article about the cover ups made by three city-run hospitals in New York City about the horrors happened to some of their patients in its care. The three hospitals named are Bellevue Hospital, Woodhull and Jacobi. NY Daily News found out in the said investigation a lot of medical malpractice done by their medical professionals that could have been avoided.

Below is the full NY Daily News report:

Some staffers at city-run hospitals have practiced a very nonmedical skill — fiction writing.

Doctors, nurses and support staff have made false entries in hospital records to cover up medical screwups, a Daily News investigation found.

Records sometimes lacked crucial data or were missing completely, making a thorough investigation impossible.

Again and again, workers at city-run hospitals faked records to cover up incidents or claimed they couldn't find data when investigators came knocking.

Between 2004 and September 2008, the state issued 16 citations for incomplete, altered or missing medical records, a News analysis of hundreds of pages of internal documents found.

BELLEVUE HOSPITAL

Records were sometimes ludicrous. At Bellevue, for instance, medical reports listed a psychiatrist performing surgery.

Sometimes, as in the case of patient Alfred Scott, they were anything but funny. Scott showed up at Bellevue Sept. 8, 2005, diagnosed as having suffered a "cardiac event." A fourth-year med student placed an IV in his left arm.

Problem No. 1: Students are not allowed to administer IVs.

Over the next two days the medical student and several nurses made apparently fictional entries in medical records.

The student claimed Scott's arm was fine. One nurse wrote that the arm's skin was "warm to touch." Another says there were "no signs of inflammation."

Problem No. 2: Scott's arm was covered from knuckles to elbow with a material called Kerlix which made examination impossible. When the Kerlix was removed after two days, staffers found Scott's arm was "blistering," his left hand "cool to touch and pulseless."

Investigators concluded "the student likely did not examine the left arm" and that the signs of problems "must have been present during the time that nursing staff documented intact skin and circulation."

Surgeons determined the IV made Scott's arm "not salvageable." Three days after surviving a heart attack, Scott had his left arm amputated at the elbow.

Besides the fictional notes, hospital records make another false claim: that a licensed medical doctor administered the IV.

Scott died four months later. His widow, Gwendolyn, sued, saying the amputation contributed to his death. The hospital was fined $14,000, but the family was not told.

In a statement, the city Health & Hospitals Corp. confirmed "protocol prohibits medical students from starting IVs" and blamed the nurse for "mistakenly" thinking the med student was a resident.

Because of this incident, HHC banned using dressing that obscures an IV site and required nurses to check IVs every day.

WOODHULL HOSPITAL

The hospital turned over "corrected" records when investigators showed up to look into a March 2007 incident in which a 3-month-old infant died.

The infant arrived at Woodhull March 25 with difficulty breathing and spiking a temperature of 102. At the time the hospital relied on a doctor who specialized in cardiac care for children, but that weekend, the doctor was out of town.

Two pediatric residents who weren't supposed to examine critical care patients without direct supervision did the exam. They recommended continuous nebulizer treatments, but they did not give this information to the attending physician.

The attending first learned this eight hours after the child arrived, when he examined the infant for the first time and recommended "close observation."

After this, the report notes, the infant began suffering "severe respiratory distress," and by 8 p.m. the hospital finally contacted the pediatric heart specialist.

That doctor recommended transferring the child to another hospital because he was out of town. At 2:15 a.m. the next day the child was transferred "with spastic tremors of face and arms." The child died within 24 hours of the transfer.

Though hospitals are supposed to report incidents like this within 24 hours, the state did not learn of this incident for a month.

Investigators found the hospital's medical files did not identify an attending physician on duty when the infant was there. The next day, the hospital produced a "corrected" record naming the doctor on duty.

The hospital insists it always had adequate doctors on hand but was cited for numerous violations, including failing to report the incident in a timely manner. It was fined $10,000.

JACOBI MEDICAL CENTER

In many cases, problems included simply losing medical records and failing to properly track patient care and status.

Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx was cited on five separate occasions for these problems, records show.

On April 8, 2004, a woman delivered a stillborn infant at Jacobi. The state found key sections of her medical records missing.

The citation said the missing records made it impossible for the facility to properly review the care the mother was given prior to the stillborn birth.

HHC called this a case of "misplaced paper" that was eventually found.

In some cases, HHC hospitals take their time about investigating incidents.

Records show a Harlem Hospital Center patient died after staff failed to properly respond to repeated episodes of severe bleeding. Staff did not investigate the cause of the bleeding until at least 10 days after the problem began and had still not completed it when the patient died less than three weeks later.

Source article: NY Daily News

Additionally, there have been reports about a case of King County Hospital negligence mid of last year.

New Jersey Court Overturns $75M Malpractice Award

The New Jersey Supreme Court has overturned one of the largest medical malpractice suit verdicts in state history.

Citing numerous trial errors and other problems, the justices reversed the $75 million in damages awarded to the parents of a boy who suffered brain damage as an infant when he was deprived of oxygen following surgery in 1998.

According to court documents, the child now suffers from significant intellectual, verbal and neuron motor deficiencies and requires constant care.

via Baslow's flickr

In the ruling announced Thursday, the justices said the Essex County trial jury was unnecessarily exposed to bias against medical professionals and Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston during the jury selection process.

The case was remanded for another trial.

Source: ClaimsJournal.com

Huge Medical Malpractice Study: Liability Should Not be More Limited.

via flickr*

Americans for Insurance Reform released a study earlier this week showing that in recent years, doctor premiums and medical malpractice claims have overwhelmingly dropped, while the profits of the medical malpractice insurance industry have soared. Significantly, the study concludes that placing further limits on the liability of negligent doctors and unsafe hospitals would be unjustifiable, and would put almost no dent in our country’s health care costs.

AIR’s report, True Risk: Medical Liability, Malpractice Insurance and Health Care, is by Gillian Cassell-Stiga and Joanne Doroshow of the Center for Justice & Democracy, and actuary J. Robert Hunter, who is Director of Insurance for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), former Commissioner of Insurance for the State of Texas, and former Federal Insurance Administrator under Presidents Carter and Ford.

In describing the study’s findings, Hunter said, “Thirty years of inflation-adjusted data show that medical malpractice premiums are the lowest they have been in this entire period. This is in no small part due to the fact that claims have fallen like a rock, down 45 percent since 2000. The periodic premium spikes we see in the data are not related to claims but to the economic cycle of insurers and to drops in investment income. Since prices have not declined as much as claims have, medical malpractice insurer profits are higher than the rest of the property casualty industry, which has been remarkably profitable over the last five years. -AIR

The findings apply equally to states that have placed major tort restrictions on victims of medical malpractice and to states that have not.

The study adds that because medical malpractice premiums amount to less than 0.5% of overall health care costs, with medical malpractice claims amounting to 0.2% (yes, these are tiny decimals) of health care costs, limiting liability any more will simply not have a significant effect on these health care costs. “If Congress completely eliminated every single medical malpractice lawsuit,” it says, “including all legitimate cases, as part of health care reform, overall health care costs would hardly change, but the costs of medical error and hospital-induced injury would remain and someone else would have to pay.”

All of this only confirms the position we’ve been taking, which is that removing or further limiting medical liability would mean robbing patients of the only meaningful check and balance they have on the impossible monstrosity of a system that American health care has become. Limiting liability is not a way to save the country money, and it’s not fair for patients who are wrongfully injured or who lose their lives due to negligence.

by Mike Ferrara via injuryboard.com

* Thomas Eakins - The Gross Clinic - 1889 - University of Pennsylvania
Eakins' famous portrayal of Dr. Agnew performing a mastectomy, The Agnew Clinic

"I'm Sorry" Policy Works for University of Michigan Health System

It’s like a test to see who will blink first: patients, who are injured as a result of medical malpractice, want justice for the pain and suffering they endure, while hospitals and hospital staff are wary to utter the words “sorry” for fear that their apology will be mistaken for an admission of wrongdoing. However, Richard Boothman, a malpractice defense attorney and chief risk officer at the University of Michigan Health System, says a simple apology can go a long way in saving time, money, and suffering for doctors, patients, and the public.

Boothman calls it “common decency”, but when doctors admit mistakes it goes well beyond decency. It has also proven to be a shrewd business strategy, as Boothman has discovered: since implementing the “I’m sorry” strategy, malpractice claims against his health system fell from 121 in 2001 to 61 in 2006. Moreover, the backlog of open claims fell from 262 in 2001 to 106 in 2006 to 83 in 2007. The U of M Health System learns of medical errors from doctors, as well as patients and their lawyers, to which the university responds by conducting a peer review to see if there was an error and also to see if additional changes are needed to prevent the same mistake from happening again. Furthermore, health system doctors and officials offer to meet with patients and their families to explain why they felt a particular treatment was appropriate, and most importantly, to sometimes admit they made a mistake.

Evening sea

However, the “I’m sorry” policy does have its skeptics: Norman Tucker, a malpractice attorney, said that while he agrees that the school is fair in admitting when it makes mistakes, it also makes it more difficult in cases where the health system denies error. Furthermore, Matthew Gaier, the co-chairman of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association’s medical malpractice committee, says it is the right of injured patients to sue healthcare providers who make mistakes and to force them to open their internal records. Moreover, per a 2007 article in the journal “Health Affairs, 181,000 people are severely injured each year as a result of medical mistakes, but only 30,000 file legal claims. Most of those people don’t sue because they don’t realize they are victims of medical malpractice. In order for there to be a reduction in the number of future medical mistakes at hospitals and to improve the standard of care, it is important that there is transparency in sharing internal records. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way hospitals are willing to share internal documents is through a lawsuit.

Despite the criticisms, the “I’m sorry” policy seems like a step in the right direction. Notwithstanding my post from yesterday, Mr. Boothman genuinely wants to do the right thing by saying sorry when it’s appropriate and resolving claims early—saving money, time and emotional trauma for the injured party and medical staff when valid claims do occur. In fact, our office has had firsthand experience with Rick Boothman. Per our office’s experience, Boothman vigorously defends and rejects cases that he believes do not involve a breach of the standard of care, but he is also fair in settling valid claims early and fairly.

via injuryboard.com

The Bausch & Lomb Settlements of 600 Eye Fungus Lawsuits Amounting to $250M

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Contact lens maker Bausch & Lomb Inc. had an overriding reason for going private in 2007: It wanted to handle a devastating recall of its flagship lens cleaner, its chief executive said, "without a lot of outside distraction."

Over the past year, away from the glare of public scrutiny, the optical products company has quietly settled nearly 600 fungal-infection lawsuits — with dozens more individual claims yet to be resolved. The cost so far: Upward of $250 million.

More than 700 lens wearers in the United States and Asia say they were exposed to a potentially blinding infection known as Fusarium keratitis while using ReNu with MoistureLoc, a new-formula multipurpose solution for cleaning, storing and moistening soft contact lenses.

Sometimes, the damage was irreparable. Seven people in Florida, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Tennessee and West Virginia had to have an eye removed. At least 60 more Americans needed vision-saving corneal transplants.

Shauna28

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 180 cases in 35 states from June 2005 through September 2006, when the agency's dedicated surveillance stopped, according to Dr. Benjamin Park, a CDC epidemiologist. CDC continued to hear of sporadic, unconfirmed cases in the months after MoistureLoc was withdrawn, Park said.

"Surveillance usually captures the tip of the iceberg and sometimes it captures a larger tip than other times," Park said in an interview.

Among out-of-court settlements reached in May was a potential bellwether case brought by Andrea Martin, a Broadway actress and comedienne whose eye was scarred. In Colorado, a corneal transplant ended a race-car driver's career. In Baltimore, a chimney-sweep business owner who lost an eye got hooked on painkillers.

"It left him with a chronic pain situation where at one point he had to go through drug rehab," said attorney Andy Alonso. "His business — handed down from generation to generation in his family — has fallen apart, his marriage has fallen apart and he now lives with his mother."

The culprit, an infection so rare that most eye doctors had never seen a case, somehow eluded MoistureLoc's disinfecting defenses. The outbreak appeared first in Hong Kong in spring 2005 and reached its peak in the United States just days after MoistureLoc was removed from domestic markets in April 2006.

Victims typically complained of eye irritation that progressed to a sudden onset of searing pain. Many were mistakenly treated with antibiotics and steroids — a delayed diagnosis that worsened the condition. A woman in New York was afflicted three months after Bausch & Lomb announced a worldwide recall in May 2006.

"She didn't know about the recall, and the infection was so aggressive, she lost her eye within two months," said her attorney, Hunter Shkolnik.

Leading eye doctors and government scientists concluded that MoistureLoc, launched in 2004 with novel disinfectant and moisturizing ingredients, was the only lens solution that contributed to the outbreak. Yet the mechanics of how it caused the problem are still not fully clear.

Some researchers theorize that the disinfectant, alexidine, absorbed into lenses at unusually high rates and the moisturizing agents created a biofilm in some circumstances that shielded and even fostered growth of the fungus to infectious levels.

With some fungal lawsuits still unresolved, the prospect of Bausch & Lomb's health care nightmare being aired in court has not entirely faded — which heartens some lawyers and doctors.

"The truth has been very carefully buried, and it appears to have been buried going back to the beginnings of the outbreak," said Dr. Arthur Epstein, who was chairman of the American Optometric Association's contact lens and cornea section during the highly publicized crisis.

"All settlements were predicated on silence about the clinical findings and blame and so forth. My hope was that what actually happened would become part of public record in a courtroom. That way, we'd be able to learn from it and move on and make sure it never happened again."

Multipurpose solutions have been on the market for over a decade, all but replacing older systems for rinsing and cleaning lenses.

In 2007, another popular formula made by Santa Ana, Calif.-based Advanced Medical Optics, the No. 3 manufacturer behind Alcon Inc. and Bausch & Lomb, was linked to a flurry of hard-to-treat Acanthamoeba keratitis infections caused by a parasite. More than 170 people have sued the company, which was acquired this year by Abbott Laboratories.

The Food and Drug Administration is poised to lay out more comprehensive testing standards for lens solutions.

"We did take the two epidemics as very much of a wake-up call, because contact lens safety is an essential public health issue," said Dr. Malvina Eydelman, director of the agency's ophthalmic division.

Financial analysts and lawyers estimate the MoistureLoc debacle could wind up costing as much as $500 million. But far more draining for Bausch & Lomb has been losing its dominance in the lucrative lens care market: 2.3 million of the nation's 30 million soft lens wearers used MoistureLoc, generating $100 million in annual sales.

While Bausch says it has settled "the vast majority of fungal infection cases," it is challenging another 500-plus lawsuits linking MoistureLoc to assorted bacterial, viral and parasitic afflictions. A pretrial hearing set for June 3-5 in New York will decide if there's a reliable scientific basis for arguing such a link.

Alissa Lynch, 21, of Thompson, Conn., said she developed a parasitic infection while using MoistureLoc in college in New Hampshire. It left her with a vision-blurring scar that took a year to heal.

"We went through hell and spent a lot of money to save that eye," said her father, Brian, who eventually decided against seeking damages. "We're just that kind of people. I don't think anybody intentionally looked to hurt anybody's eyes."

When Bausch & Lomb was acquired by private equity firm Warburg Pincus for $3.67 billion in October 2007, Chief Executive Ronald Zarrella said the deal would allow the company "to pursue the growth path we were on ... without a lot of outside distraction." Zarrella retired last year.

The 156-year-old Rochester-based company, which posted $2.5 billion in 2007 sales, employs 13,000 people and expects to return to public ownership within the next six years.

"They can do all this out of the public eye — guys like me aren't sitting there scrutinizing the financial impact of every single settlement," said analyst Jeff Johnson of Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee. "You can completely focus on your brand and on doing what's right by the patient."

Bausch & Lomb resorted to pushing an older product, ReNu MultiPlus, to try to shore up its battered lens care business. But those sales dropped from $522 million in 2005 to about $450 million in 2008, while Alcon's rose from $297 million to $469 million, said analyst Peter Bye of Jefferies & Co. in New York.

The knock on profits was more acute. With MultiPlus already sold under generic or retailer-chain labels, Alcon's share of branded solutions is "much higher than Bausch's," Bye said. "When you talk about (lens-care) boxes going out to new patients, it's up in the 60-70 percent range in the U.S."

Alcon's multipurpose formula was untarnished and "that's why they're cleaning up," Bye said, adding that "the stasis at the FDA means this competitive imbalance is continuing."


Source: wjz.com

Emergency doctors nationwide finding protection from ERs gone wild

State by state, emergency physicians are winning added protections against malpractice suits through new laws that can provide near-immunity from most emergency department mistakes.

Proponents promise the laws will bring an end to the emergency doctor shortage and protect physicians from frivolous suits. While the laws would protect doctors from their emergency-room errors, they would do little (or even work against efforts) to solve the root problems that contribute to emergency room mistakes. Could laws that shield physicians from financial penalties for mistakes quiet discussions about understaffing and overcrowding in ERs?

“There will be no incentive to have any kind of quality control,” said Dennis Lansdowne, a partner and malpractice attorney at Spangenberg, Shibley & Liber in Cleveland who has reviewed Ohio’s version of the proposal.

Ohio is the latest state to introduce new legislation that would dramatically increase the legal standard to win a civil suit against a doctor working at an emergency department. It also offers the same protection for doctors helping after floods, tornadoes or other disasters.

The bill says physicians would have qualified civil immunity while working in emergency rooms and be subject only to lawsuits if they showed “willful or wanton misconduct” — a high standard for liability usually reserved to determine punitive damages.

“We want them without the risk of an impending lawsuit hanging over their heads,” said State Sen. Steve Buehrer, the primary sponsor of the legislation.

The bill says that those protected by the law are specifically providing services in compliance with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). However, some proponents said the legislation is meant to protect all physicians providing emergency-department care. A state Senate committee had its first hearing last week on the legislation and scheduled a second this week.

The Ohio State Bar Association is reviewing the legislation and likely will take a position in 10 days to two weeks, association lobbyist Bill Weisenberg said.

That bill is part of a second wave from states — including Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and North Carolina — that seek such protections as well as special caps on damages in emergency-room civil suits. Utah approved its version of the law in March. These later efforts follow earlier successes in Florida, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina.

Medical groups say emergency physicians are among the most-sued doctors in the country. They’re the fourth out of five practices listed individually in Ohio’s Medical Professional Liability Closed Claim Report (pdf). Emergency physicians are sued almost as often as general surgeons, but less often than family practitioners and internists, according to state data.

They’re sued largely because it’s easier for them to make devastating mistakes in the hectic environment of an ER and because EMTALA mandates treatment for anyone who needs emergency care.

Image Credit: Joe Shlabotnik

Physicians’ groups say the increased threat of medical malpractice lawsuits is behind a shortage of emergency-room physicians and the reason why other doctors resist working shifts in that department. About 11 percent of claims resulted in judgments against Ohio emergency physicians in 2007, the most recent year for the closed-claim report.

“We feel they deserve a little extra protection from simple medical malpractice so they can be that safety-net for anybody at any time,” said Laura Tiberi, executive director of the Ohio American College of Emergency Physicians. “Emergency physicians don’t choose their patients like others do.”

Texas credits malpractice reforms in 2003 — including its own emergency physician liability reform — for a resurgence in emergency medicine (pdf). Twenty-four mostly rural counties have added emergency medicine physicians since passage of the legislation, according to a report by the state and medical interest groups.

But other factors, like population growth in areas where new facilities and practices open, also could contribute to more facilities and physicians. Many states — including Ohio, which also passed reforms in 2003 — have said it’s still too early to say how legislation has contributed to change.

Tiberi said the legislation proposed in Ohio would ease issues including overcrowding and understaffing in emergency rooms. Wait times have increased nationwide, emergency room visits also have increased, and there’s increasing consensus that a shortage of emergency physicians and general surgeons will create a crisis in emergency departments. By decreasing the fear of litigation, physicians likely will return to emergency departments, Tiberi said.

Attorney Lansdowne doubts that. Instead, he predicts that many of the larger staffing companies that help manage emergency rooms would feel no need to make changes. They’re rewarded, in part, by the number of patients they see.

“People going into an emergency room have no choices — including what kind of emergency room they go to,” Lansdowne said. “They’re put in ambulances and often then they’re going to be treated by physicians who are overworked, underpaid and staffed by a corporation that really makes money by treating as many patients as they can.”

Emergency room physicians are protected already, as long as they act within the concept of the standard of care, and don’t deserve an exception beyond what other physicians receive, Lansdowne said. “They can be wrong, and as long as they act in accordance with standard of care, they are not liable,” he said.

“This is the last place we want to start giving immunity,” Lansdowne said. “Who goes to emergency rooms as much as anybody? The very young and very old. Your most vulnerable populations are at risk.”

MedCity News