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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Tubing misconnections are medical errors that can lead to severe personal injury or death.These errors often happen when a doctor or a nurse mistakenly connect tubes for different functions together, for example connecting a feeding tube to a tracheostomy tube. To avoid these type of errors, new ISO standards have been developed for tubing connectors. The objective of these new connectors is to make it impossible to connect tubes used for different functions. The first ISO connector standard has already been adopted and others will gradually be introduced and adopted throughout 2014 and 2015. During the transition phase however new risks of tubing misconnections will arise and the Joint Commission is urging hospitals and healthcare providers to take all necessary measures to prepare for the new standards by building awareness and communicate across their facility, prepare and train the staff, adopt the new connectors and measure the accomplished progress.

Download the Powerpoint presentation of the Joint Commission webinar

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medication%20error.jpgMedication error in psychiatric practice can be medical malpractice. In a recent study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and funds from the Recovery Act, researchers found that patients between the age of 15 and 40 years old who suffered a first-episode psychosis were not prescribed a medication treatment complying with the recommended guidelines for their condition. According to the guidelines, patients with a first episode of psychosis should be treated differently than those with recurrent episodes.

Researchers are calling for more prescriber education after they studied 404 individuals suffering from an initial schizophrenia episode and found that 159 of them were not prescribed an appropriate treatment. Among these 159 people, 8.8 percent were prescribed higher-than-recommended doses of antipsychotics; 23.3 percent were prescribed more than one antipsychotic; 36.5 percent were prescribed an antipsychotic and an antidepressant without a clear need for the antidepressant; 10.1 percent were prescribed psychotropic medications without an antipsychotic medication; and 1.2 percent were prescribed stimulants. In addition, 32.1 percent were prescribed olanzapine, a medication not recommended for first-episode patients. Some of the 159 fell into multiple categories.

Read more in the press release of the National Institutes of Health

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Health%20tech.jpgDevice-related hazards can lead to medical malpractice. In its 2015 top 10 Health Technology hazards, ECRI Institute lists 10 safety topics deemed crucial for hospitals to address. Here is the list of the top 10 technology hazards;

1. Alarm hazard: inadequate alarm configuration policies and practice 2. Data integrity: incorrect or missing data in EHR’s and other Health IT Systems 3. Mix-Up of IV lines leading to misadministration of drugs and and solutions 4. Inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments 5. Ventilator disconnections not caught because of mis-set or missed alarms 6. Patient-handling device use errors and device failures 7. “Dose Creep”: unnoticed variations in diagnostic radiation exposures 8. Robotic surgery: complications due to insufficient training 9. Cyber security: insufficient protections for medical devices and systems 10. Overwhelmed recall and safety-alert management program

In future blogs we will look at each of these medical technology hazards in detail.

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Jeff%20Bloom.jpgJeff Bloom, a partner at New York personal injury law firm Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf, will be speaking at “Bridging the Gap”, a special CLE program for recent graduates and newly admitted attorneys put on by the New York State Bar Association.

This two-day program will be presented in New York City on December 10th and 11th and broadcast live to other locations, in Albany and Buffalo, in an interactive video conference format, allowing “real time” interaction between all locations. This program is approved for MCLE credit for newly admitted attorneys in all locations, regardless of format.

Jeff will speak on Wednesday December 11th at 2:55 pm and will provide an overview on how to handle a medical malpractice case. Since joining the firm in 1979, Jeff has carved out a reputation as one of the top medical malpractice and personal injury attorneys in New York. Known and respected by both the bench and bar as a fierce advocate on behalf of his clients, he has helped them successfully achieve numerous multi-million dollar recoveries.

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Failure to diagnose Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) can be medical malpractice that can result in bloating, abdominal distention, abdominal pain and discomfort, diarrhea, fatigue and weakness. Complications of SIBO range from mild, including diarrhea and minimal vitamin deficiencies, to severe, including malabsorption and neuropathies due to fat-soluble vitamin deficiencies.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman, tells the story of a woman who struggled for more than 40 years with this condition. For years she was misdiagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome until she was referred to Gina Sam a gastroenterologist at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and a specialist in motility disorders, problems that occur as food passes through the digestive tract. Because the woman didn’t suffer any pain which is a prominent symptom of Irritated Bowel Symptom, Dr. Sam suspected her patient was suffering from another condition. The doctor was able to properly diagnose her patient with SIBO, a condition that has received new attention as gastroenterologists have focused on the importance of the microbiome, the stew of bacteria and other microorganisms that comprises the gut’s ecosystem and is affected by diet.

Read the complete article here

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Jeff%20Bloom.pngOur partner Jeffrey Bloom will be speaking about Breast Imaging Malpractice tomorrow, October 15th, at the Mt. Sinai Update 2014: Breast Imaging, a CME program designed to cover clinical aspects of breast imaging including digital mammography, breast ultrasound, breast MRI, and interventional procedures, as well as medicolegal issues. The faculty consists of twelve nationally and internationally recognized experts.

Since joining the firm following his graduation from law school in 1979, Jeffrey Bloom has carved out a reputation as one of the top medical malpractice and personal injury attorneys in New York. Known and respected by both the bench and bar as a fierce advocate on behalf of his clients. He has helped his clients successfully achieve numerous multi-million dollar recoveries.

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We are proud to announce that for the ninth consecutive year our attorneys have been named to the New York Super Lawyers list. In 2014 ten of our lawyers were selected. These are: Ben B. Rubinowitz, Anthony H. Gair, Howard Hershenhorn, Jeffrey B. Bloom, Richard M. Steigman, Jerome I. Katz, Ernest R. Steigman, Stephen H. Mackauf, Seymour Boyers and Christopher L. Sallay. Peter J. Saghir was again selected to the Rising Stars list.

Our firm is located in Manhattan and handles all types of catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death cases from traffic accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice to product liability in New York and New Jersey.

Since 1919, the firm has built is reputation as one of the top injury law firms in the United States by limiting its practice to a select group of serious and substantial tort cases so that extensive personal attention and meticulous trial preparation are afforded to each of our clients on all matters. The results speak for themselves as for the last 10 years our firm has obtained verdicts or settlements exceeding $1 million for more than 425 cases.

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A diagnosis delayed by a too long wait time in an emergency room can be medical malpractice and can be deadly. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, patients checking in at the ER of the Brooklyn Interfaith Hospital wait an average of 125 minutes before they can be seen by a doctor. The hospital recently added more staff but it has financial struggles. Most of its ER patients are uninsured.

The Brooklyn Hospital has the worst ER waiting time in New York State and 4 times the national average according to an article in the New York Daily News.

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Recently more and more hospital patients have been receiving bills with hefty charges from unexpected out of network doctors or other medical service providers such as labs or Radiologists. Services that used to be included in the daily hospital rate now comes as additional costs because they are provided by out of network contractors. Many emergency rooms, for example, are now staffed by out-of-network doctors who bill separately.

Out-of-network doctor charges are not negotiable and can reach phenomenal amounts. For example a patient requiring a skin graft would pay $1,781 to an in-network doctor while an out-of-network doctor would potentially charge $150,500. In a recent article in the New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal exposes this practice.

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A wheelchair-bound resident of a Long Island nursing home suffered serious personal injury after a nurse committed a medical error and injected him with morphine instead of a prescribed muscle relaxant and then attempted to cover up her error by falsifying documents. The nursing home resident overdosed and had to be admitted to a hospital where Narcan, a medication to counter the effects of an opiate overdose was administered. The nurse, Vicki Price, was charged recently with one count of endangering the welfare of a vulnerable elderly person, or an incompetent or physically disabled person, in the second degree, a class E felony; one count of endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person, a class A misdemeanor; one count of willful violation of the public health laws, an unclassified misdemeanor; and two counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a class E felony. She faces up to 1 1/3 to 4 years in prison if convicted.

Read more in the Press Release

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