The statistics are sobering: Nationwide, nearly half of all patients suffer from some sort of medical error upon discharge from a hospital. The errors — prescription errors, lack of a follow-up appointment with a primary care doctor, or failure to notify the primary care doctor of test results — are often caused by poor communication. […]
More than 10 years after the wrongful death of their 13-month-old son, a couple has won a medical malpractice lawsuit against a surgeon whose negligence resulted in the boy’s death. Their decade-long struggle pitted them against the Lake County, Indiana, coroner’s office, which refused to turn over evidence essential to their case. The couple’s infant […]
Many involved in issues of public safety are reexamining the question of what constitutes proper documentation and reporting of medical procedures, and whether compliance with recommended procedures is as important as the outcomes of those procedures. Recent studies have examined the topics of procedural breakdowns, improper medical care and the reticence of physicians to report […]
Pennsylvania’s Superior Court recently rejected an appeal in a large medical malpractice case involving a Lackawanna County doctor. The doctor had appealed an earlier decision by a jury in the same county, claiming that there had been significant errors in the trial. The 2008 trial resulted in a substantial jury award for the plaintiffs, a […]
A surgeon and the operating room staff that assisted him have been suspended after a broken drill bit was found inside the head of a patient they had recently operated on. According to the hospital spokeswoman, the drill bit broke during the surgery and, per the hospital’s procedural guidelines, should have been located and accounted […]
The parents of a 10-year-old girl who developed cerebral palsy as a result of oxygen deprivation prior to birth are suing the Pennsylvania doctor who delivered her. The parents, backed by the opinion of another doctor who has worked with the girl for several years, claim that the failure to perform a caesarian section led […]
We trust physicians to tell us the truth when it comes to our health or the health of loved ones. When that trust is betrayed, it hurts the relationship a patient has with his or her doctors. Indeed, the entire healthcare system suffers. In Maryland, more than 100 individuals who received coronary heart stents have […]
Is the healthcare system broken? The family of a Pennsylvania man who died while waiting for emergency personnel to come and take him to the hospital thinks so. As reported by Joe Mandak for The Associated Press, the man’s two children have named the city of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County’s Department of Emergency Services and a […]
Medical malpractice claims may never actually be a physician’s best friend. However, they can be an invaluable training tool for the purpose of avoiding future lawsuits. Laura Landro had a great article in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week discussing the ways in which physicians and healthcare providers can learn from medical malpractice claims. […]
