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

Published on:

By

Diane HoffmanCan medical malpractice lawsuits help reduce opioid addiction?  In a recent opinion in the New York Times Diane Hoffman  a law professor and the director of the Law and Health Care program at the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law is warning about the consequences of erroneous criminal prosecutions of doctors who treat chronic pain patients. While she agrees that bad actors who are over prescribing drugs for profit should be punished, she worries that good doctors may under threat their patients for fear of being investigated and prosecuted.  While she recognizes that opioid addiction and abuse is a major issue that should be addressed by law enforcement, she also believes that the 100 million American patients who are suffering from serious pain condition shouldn’t be under treated. We agree that doctors who specialize in treating patients for chronic pain should not be subject to criminal prosecution. However, those doctors who run so called prescription mills and write narcotic prescriptions for anyone who walks in the door should be criminally prosecuted. Doctors who have no training in the field of pain medication and over prescribe narcotics resulting in fatal overdoses may be liable for medical malpractice. The fact is that lawyers who specialize in medical malpractice will not bring these cases unless the prescribing doctor blatantly over prescribed without any medical basis. Ms. Lane’s statement that doctors who under prescribe pain medication may be subject to medical malpractice law suits is based on one 15 year old case in which a doctor was found liable for elder abuse for under prescribing pain medication to an elderly man dying of cancer. In reality these types of cases are rarely brought.

Published on:

By

As medical technologies are getting increasingly sophisticated so do the risks for hospital negligence and medical malpractice. The ECRI Institute recently released its 2016_Top_10_Hospital_C-Suite_Watch_List and going through this list almost feels like reading a sci-fi novel. Link to 30 page detailed report on blog.  Here is an overlook of the top 10 new medical technologies that hospitals should put on their watch list:

  1. Mobile Stroke Units are high tech ambulances specially outfitted with equipment allowing patients to be diagnosed and if necessary treated directly at their home by a specifically trained staff.  The units are also equipped with telemedecine technology that allows the mobile staff to communicate directly with remote clinical personnel. Strokes are a leading cause of death and traumatic brain injury. Timing is crucial and a reduction of time between the diagnosis and the treatment can save lives and reduce severe injuries.
  2. Medical Device Cybersecurity is a major risk to patients that hospitals have been so far unable to fully control. Medical devices such as a pace-maker or infusion pump are connected through a wire or wifi  to the Electronic Health Record of a patient. These devices can often be too easily hacked. Thieves can then use the personal data for identity theft or to invade the home of the patient when he or she is in the hospital.  In other cases it may even be a murder weapon. Dick Cheney’s doctor had the wifi disabled on his pace-maker due to fear he may be hacked to be assassinated.
Continue reading →
Published on:

By

In Davis v. South Nassau Communities Hospital, Edward Davis sued this  New York hospital for medical malpractice after he was injured in a car accident caused by an impaired hospital’s patient. The patient was Lorraine Walsh. Walsh presented herself to the South Nassau Communities Hospital Emergency Room with stomach pain. The ER doctor gave her a very powerful pain medication and told her she could go home.  Because the patient was allergic to morphine, she was given Diluadid, an opioid, which is stronger than morphine and Ativan, a fast acting benzodiazepine with a 6 hour half life intravenously.  The medication that was given by the ER doctor can impair the ability to operate a motor vehicle. However the doctor didn’t warn the patient nor ask if she was indeed driving home alone.

As she was driving back home, Lorraine Walsh, impaired by the medication, crossed a double yellow line into oncoming traffic and struck a vehicle driven by Edward Davis. Edward Davis suffered personal injury caused by the car accident. Davis then filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital and the physician. The suit was dismissed by the by the trial court and by the Appellate Division. Davis then appealed to the New York Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals had to rule on an interesting question: can a third party injured by an impaired patient sue a medical provider under the theory that the medical provider’s malpractice was the cause of of the third party injury even though the third party didn’t have a direct relationship with the medical provider. In a 4-2 decision, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that Davis’claim was permissible.  The Court held that defendants had a duty to plaintiffs to warn Walsh that the drugs administered to her impaired her ability to safely operate an automobile.“Our decision herein imposes no additional obligation on a physician who administers prescribed medication. Rather, we merely extend the scope of persons to whom the physician may be responsible for failing to fulfill that responsibility.” Judge Stein and Judge Abdus-Salaam dissented in a lengthy opinion

Published on:

By

Best Law Firms - Medical Malpractice - 2016 The attorneys at Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf have more than 90 years of experience representing patients who have been injured or have died as the result of medical malpractice. Eight of our lawyers have been recognized in Best Lawyers in America in the area of medical malpractice. Additionally, attorney Jeffrey Bloom co-chairs the Medical Malpractice Committee of The New York State Trial Lawyers. At GGCRBHS&M, we seek to help you recover compensation so that you can afford the care you need in order for you and your family to begin to recover. Our experienced medical malpractice attorneys will work with qualified experts in the medical profession to help prove your claim. Throughout your case we will remain attentive and responsive to your medical and legal needs and meticulously prepare your case for trial. When your family suffers as a result of negligence, you deserve maximum compensation.

Published on:

By

In a recent article, Sandra G. Boodman from the Washington Post writes about the case of a man whose doctors failed to diagnose Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) for months until he consulted with a well traveled gastroenterologist who suspected FMF. FMF is a disorder caused by a gene mutation. this disorder is known to affect Sephardic Jews, whose ancestry is Middle Eastern, as well as non-Jews from the Middle East, Italy and Armenia.

43 year old Jeffrey Sank suffered from recurrent abdominal pain for nearly a year. At the beginning attacks were intermittent but after several months the pain increased in severity and intensity. Jeffrey visited with multiple doctors including two gastroenterologists, a kidney specialist and an infectious-disease physician.  The infectious-disease specialist suspected he had FMF but but did not pursue it after Sank told him he wasn’t of Middle Eastern descent. The last gastroenterologist he saw also suspected it was FMF and even though Sank again denied any Middle Eastern descent again, he decided to prescribe him colchicine, a mainstay therapy for FMF. The drug worked immediately and the abdominal attacks almost stopped. Later on genetic tests demonstrated that Sank had indeed inherited mutated genes from both his parents.

 

Published on:

By

Failure to diagnose or to treat priapism, a medical condition of prolonged penile erection that is unrelated to sexual stimulation, can result in serious complications such as permanent erectile dysfunction or disfigurement of the penis.  Priapism is not very common but as a result of the use of erectile dysfunction medication the potential for serious complications from Priapism is on the rise. Other medications such as intracavernosal agents, some antihypertensive agents , some psychotropic drugs, anticoagulants, cocaine, certain hormones, and ginkgo Biloba are also known to cause priapism. Diseases such as sickle cell disease can also cause this painful medical condition.

When a patient suffers from priapism it is crucial that the doctor determines if it is a case of ischemic or nonischemic priapism. Ischemic priapism is a medical emergency that requires immediate treatment. Usually the patient will receive an intracavernous injection of an alpha-adrenergic sympathomimetic agent followed by a surgical shunting procedure if necessary. Nonischemic priapism is not considered an emergency and will usually resolve by itself without treatment.

In its “Case of the Month” the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants looks at the case of a middle aged patient who was diagnosed with ischemic priapism associated with trazodone use. Read the complete article here

 

Published on:

By

34 year old Kelly Mayhew died from medical malpractice last May in New York. She had traveled from Maryland with her mom to get cosmetic silicone injections of her buttock in Queens New York, City. Unfortunately, the doctor who injected her was an unlicensed phony plastic surgeon who fled the scene soon  after Mayhew started to gurgle and struggle to breathe leaving her victim to die.  The fake doctor never surrendered and the NYPD believe she know lives in England. The case is currently being presented to a grand jury in front of which the city Medical Examiner said that the cause of the death was “systemic silicone emboli due to cosmetic silicone injections of buttocks” and “the manner of death was homicide”. Read more in the NY Daily News

Published on:

By

imageFailure to diagnose or delay to treat herpes simplex in the eye area can result in serious personal injury such as episcleritis, keratopathy, iritis, blepharitis, conjunctivitis, uveitis, keratitis, retinitis, optic neuritis, glaucoma, proptosis, cicatricial lid retractions, and extraocular muscle palsies. In “case of the month: a lesion near the eye”, the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants looks at the case of a 19-year-old man  who visited his healthcare provider with erythema and irritation of the skin adjacent to his right eye. The patient  noted the irritation for the first time after a military exercise in a sandy environment. Read the case here 

 

Published on:

By

Failure to diagnose a medical condition can be medical malpractice. However in some rare cases patients can suffer from unknown conditions that even the the most skilled doctors have failed to diagnose despite extensive clinical investigations. These patients now have a new possibility to submit their case to  the some of the nation’s leading diagnostic teams. The Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) just launched an  online application portal that will allow patients suffering from a rare undiagnosed disease to submit an application to get their case studied by a top national network of clinical sites. Read more here

Published on:

By

imageHospital medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in this country, behind heart disease and cancer.

In a recent article in the New York Times, a retired transplant surgeon explains how an unresponsive medical staff left him no other choice but to break into  into the crash cart, a box on wheels containing equipment hospitals use to resuscitate patients and pull out two liters of saline solution which he ran into his daughter’s IV Line to prevent her from dying.

Unfortunately most patients and their families don’t have the medical knowledge and the means to make things different if the staff is negligent or a medical error is being committed. Here are the reactions of some of the readers to this article.

 

  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 17
  6. 18
  7. 19
  8. 20
  9. 21
  10. 22
  11. 23
  12. ...
  13. 41
Badges
Super Lawyers Best Lawyers Martindale-Hubbell
SEE NEW JERSEY DISCLAIMER PAGE- AWARD METHODOLOGY