Hard economic times have everyone looking for ways to economize, including health care providers in Pennsylvania and around the country. Soaring health care costs and medical insurance companies that want to pay as little as possible for patient care are squeezing doctors and pressuring them to find ways to cut costs. Unfortunately, cost-cutting urges in […]
In the last post, we discussed some of the factors that go into assessing the strength of a medical malpractice case. We talked about a health care provider’s breach of their duty to provide the appropriate standard of care, and about damages to the patient. What other factors indicate the strength or weakness of a […]
What is medical malpractice? Or, what does the average person think medical malpractice is? Politically, it has become popular to think of medical malpractice as a “shakedown” of doctors and hospitals, and that medical malpractice judgments are easy to get, providing “free money” to oversensitive patients. None of these views is supported by the facts. […]
Opening arguments were heard this week in a medical malpractice trial that began after an unusually long delay. Before being sued for medical malpractice, the defendant doctor went underground and fled the country. After being on the run for five years, authorities caught up with him in Italy. Now back in the United States, the doctor faces […]
A new report from Public Citizen has concluded that state medical boards that should have disciplined problem doctors have failed to do so, and the failure stretches back over the past two decades. The failure to mete out discipline raises the question of how many of these doctors have become repeat offenders when it comes to failing to maintain […]
By all accounts, 76-year-old Geraldine O. was in good health before she entered Massachusetts General Hospital on November 18 for a routine procedure. She still worked at Revere City Hall, lived on her own, cooked and ran errands. She wasn’t ready to die. A medication error took Geraldine’s life a week after she entered Mass […]
Article written by Clifford A. Rieders, Esquire The newest report to show “the disappearing medical malpractice case” is the Annual Report of Operations issued March 1, 2011, by the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error Fund. The Mcare Fund insures doctors and hospitals for so-called “excess” claims, which means claims where there is provable […]
A police officer who was suffering from rectal bleeding and other gastric complaints went to see an Indiana doctor in 2004. Despite having symptoms indicating the possible presence of colorectal cancer, the doctor did not order a sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy to test for colon cancer. The 35-year-old police officer was treated for other conditions and was discharged. […]
It has recently been reported in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that medical reviews at Westmoreland Hospital have determined two cardiologists, Drs Ehab Morcos and George Bousamra, implanted coronary stents in patients who may not have needed them. It is estimated that at least 141 patients received the stents in 2010 alone. The medical review was conducted […]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently upheld a medical malpractice verdict of $7.5 million against the U.S. government. The plaintiff is a woman who is married to master sergeant in the Air Force, and the medical treatment she received was from Air Force medical personnel at Andersen Air Force Base in […]
