Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

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spinal cord injuryThe medical practice of trying to avoid scar formation at the site of a spinal cord injury may indeed not be correct. Every year approximately 12,500 American will suffer a spinal cord injury and an estimated 276,000 people in the US are suffering from long term effects related to this injury. For decades the prevailing medical dogma was that that scars were preventing neuronal regrowth across the injured area but a newly released study says it is actually the opposite that happens. Scar forming cells called astrocytes may actually help nerve regrowth.  A study recently published in Nature and authored by  Mark A. Anderson, Joshua E. Burda, Yilong Ren, Yan Ao, Timothy M. O’Shea, Riki Kawaguchi, Giovanni Coppola, Baljit S. Khakh, Timothy J. Deming & Michael V. Sofroniew found that   “scars may be a bridge and not a barrier towards developing better treatments for paralyzing spinal cord injuries.”

Read more in Medical News Today

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depressedA doctor who doesn’t screen a child treated for Cushing syndrome for depression related mental illness may commit medical malpractice.

Cushing syndrome is a rare disease that occurs when the body produces too much of the hormone cortisol. It can lead to obesity, infections, bone fractures and kidney stones. Therefore it shouldn’t be left untreated.  The disease can be caused by taking too much glucocorticosteroid medicine or by a pituitary gland tumor that releases Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) among other causes. When a child suffers from this syndrome the usual treatment is to remove the tumor that produces the excess cortisol.

A study recently released by the National Institute of Health however shows that children that have been treated for this syndrome have a high risk of developing anxiety and suicidal thoughts months after they have been successfully treated. The study looked at 149 patients and found that 6% of them thought about suicide and experienced depression, irritability, anxiety and anger with outbursts of rage after the treatment. These symptoms appeared from 7 to 48 months after the treatment.

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renal mass

renal mass in a 3 year olds child

Failure to timely diagnose Denys-Drash syndrome can be medical malpractice that can lead to renal failure and ultimately death. Denys-Drash syndrom is a very rare congenital disorder that affects young children. There are only 150 known cases in the world therefore very little information is available for doctors to diagnose and treat this disorder.

What is known so far is that  90% of the children with this disorder develop a rare pediatric kidney cancer known as Wilms tumor. Undescended testes and severe proximal hypospadias are also associated with this disorder. The Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAAPA) recently released an article describing the case of a 3 year old patient affected by this syndrome. The authors Shawn C. Smith,  Barry Chang and Laura Beth Fleming are all from the Cardon Children Medical Center in Mesa, AZ where the patient was admitted.  The article describe how the authors of the article diagnosed the disorder and which treatments were used to treat the patient. The complete article can be found here 

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Jeffrey BloomOur partner, New York Medical Malpractice Lawyer Jeffrey Bloom was quoted in an article about medical malpractice insurance in NY which appeared on Politico New York/Capital New York.com. The article focused on the influx into the New York medical malpractice insurance market of out of state insurers known as risk retention groups. While New York’s carriers are more expensive, they are safer than out of state insurers because they pay into a guaranty fund that acts as a safety net.  If one of them is in trouble and goes belly up, the costs are passed along to the other insurers of the State. Out of state companies also known as Risk Retention Groups (RRGs) do not pay into this guaranty fund. This is one of the reasons why they can offer cheaper rates to physicians than New York insurers.  RRGs are regulated by their home state and not by New York Sate. If a RRG goes under,  in some cases physicians maybe exposed and personally liable for malpractice claims. Because New York can’t regulate these funds it weakens the state’s safety net. Additionally the recent turmoil of Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers, or PRI, the second largest carrier in the state, is further undermining the market.  Jeff pointed out that the New York  medical malpractice market is not only quite stable but obviously viewed as a potentially  quite profitable market by medical malpractice insurers nationwide.
In addition to trying and managing medical malpractice cases, Jeffrey Bloom is the Co-chair of the Medical Malpractice Committee of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association as well as the Co-Chair of LAWPAC New York, the Trial Lawyers political action committee. In these roles, he works to protect the rights of victims of medical malpractice in Albany with the Legislature and State government.
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Distribution of the maxillary and mandibular nerves, and the submaxillary ganglion. Source: Wikipedia

Facial nerves, Source: Wikipedia

Failure to diagnose a rare disease called trigeminal neuralgia (TN) can be medical malpractice. The disorder can cause pain so extreme to a patient that it has been nicknamed “the suicide disease”.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman describes the story of a 59 year old man who almost died after a cohort of doctors he visited were unable to make a proper diagnosis.

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brOur managing partner, New York Medical Malpractice Lawyer Ben Rubinowitz will be a panel member at the Medical Malpractice Litigation 2016 NYC Live & Webcast seminar organized by the NYSBA on April 15.   Ben will be speaking on effective methods of deposing the defendant doctor in a medical malpractice case.

This seminar is an excellent opportunity for young and experienced lawyers to keep up to date with recent issues in medical malpractice and to learn trial strategies and techniques from top litigators and distinguished judges. The Agenda includes:

  • Developments in the Substantive Law
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Medical malpractice is on the rise in hospices. Once a place handled by nuns and caring volunteers, hospice care has become a multi-million dollar business handled by not so caring CEO’s who are often putting profits ahead of patient needs.

Recently the FBI busted Brad Harris the 30 year old owner and CEO of a Texas Hospice for instructing nurses to overdose patients.  The Daily Beast  writes that during the course of the investigation Harris texted one of the nurses “You need to make this patient go bye-bye”. Harris who has no medical education also texted another nurse to increase by four times the patient’s medication. In another conversation Harris said “if only this F*** would die”.

Because hospices are paid by the government through Medicaid and Medicare  they receive a cap amount of $27,820.75  per patient. Therefore a patient who stays alive too long is not profitable for a hospice. The incentive is to have more patients with shorter stays. The FBI said Harris spoke about “finding patients who would die within 24hrs”.

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NursingMedical malpractice is often preventable. According to statistics from the Journal of the American Medical Association, 80% of adverse events in the health care system are the result of human errors. Medical malpractice is not only committed by doctors but also by nurses and other health care professionals. In a recent article in Minority Nurse, Nicole Thomas, a legal nurse consultant shares some very interesting statistics about medical malpractice. She also gives the following tips to nurses to avoid being sued for medical malpractice:

  1. Nurses should make sure they always proprely document their work. When a nurse writes a clear and precise description of what happens to a patient when he is under her care it  not only helps her and the staff make sure the patient is proprely being taken care but it also protects the nurse in case of a potential lawsuit. A nurse who defends herself  by saying “I did it but I forgot to document it”  will have trouble convincing the jury in a medical malpractice trial.
  2. Not only nurses should document everything but they should make sure their notes are easy to read. Even though a nurse may have been doing the right thing, unreadable notes open the door for a patient to question the nurse’s actions in considering filing a medical malpractice lawsuit.
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Urgent Care Centers have been opening all around New York City and the US these recent years  but are they really safe? Here are the most common acute care medical malpractice risks:

  • Patient is being send home with a very abnormal vital sign without a re-evaluation of that abnormal sign
  • Poor risk factor evaluation happens when  practitioners forget to ask important questions about the medical history of the patient
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Abdominal compartment syndrome is well recognized as a potential complication of laparotomy for trauma. It has also been reported after repair of large ventral hernias and may be anticipated in any case in which there is a loss of domain for abdominal organs. Failure to diagnose Intra-Abdominal Hypertension leading to Abdominal Compartment Syndrome, multi-system organ failure and patient death following surgery of the Abdominal Cavity may constitute medical malpractice. For a complete discussion of this insidious condition see our web page, “Abdominal Compartment Syndrome”

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