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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CLABSI can be medical malpractice. Most infections occur when medical devices are not properly sanitized or when hospital employees are negligent of patients safety regulations.

One hospital recently demonstrated that CLABSI can be prevented. The White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles implemented a training program that resulted in zero iatrogenic pneumothorax hospital wide and zero CLABSI in the ICU. See video below.

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What are the most common medical malpractice claims filed against internists? Which ones have the most chance to be paid? Which ones are the most expensive? A study published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine and led by Sandeep S. Mangalmurti, MD, JD, from the Bassett Heart Care Institute in Cooperstown, NY uses data from the Physician Insurers Association of America to analyze 250,000 lawsuits against internists that have been closed between 1985 and 2009 to answer these questions and others.

Diagnostic errors represent 26% of all closed lawsuits against internists, 36% of all paid claims and 43% of the total amount paid for medical malpractice by internists. Among the 8,925 closed claims only 34% of them were paid. The study also highlights that most frequent diagnostic errors claims are error in diagnosing lung cancer, myocardial infarction, colon cancer and breast cancer.

The second most common type of claims filed against internists are medical malpractice claims not related to a medical error but to a breach of care such as a failure to obtain consent or failure of medical equipment or other. 95% of these claims are rejected therefore even though they account for 25% of all closed claims they only represent 5% of paid lawsuits and 5% of the total amount paid toward internists medical malpractice claims.

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Hospital-associated infection can be medical malpractice. 5% of hospital inpatients develop an infection during their stay. As a result patients who develop an infection usually have to extend their stay in the hospital. Hospital acquired infection if not diagnosed and treated properly can also lead to the death of the patient. .

Blood transfusion is a very common hospital procedure during which the patient has a risk of developing an infection.

Hospitals have different strategies as to when a blood transfusion is required. Some have a liberal strategy which means that they will administer red blood cells to a patient when the patient’s hemoglobin level falls below 10 g/dL and some have a more restrictive strategy and will give a blood transfusion to the patient once the level of hemoglobin is below 8 or 7 g/dL.

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Engaging patients and their families can prevent medical errors and reduce harm to patients. In their latest report “Safety Is Personal: Partnering with Patients and Families for the Safest Care” the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute is advocating for the inclusion of patients and families in clinical activities, health care design and delivery as well as policy development.

The report points out that the actual health system makes it difficult for patients and families to partner with care providers in order to improve patient safety. Lack of access to health records, intimidation or fear of retribution promoted by a generally paternalistic professional culture as well as a lack of easy to understand tools and checklists are among the many barriers that prevent a positive collaboration between the medical staff and the patient’s family.

The report calls for targeted education and training for health care clinicians and staff to give them skills to better engage patients in decisions and management of health problems and to redesign processes and systems to facilitate patient and family partnerships.

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Getting cheap cosmetic surgery in a foreign country can be risky. Medical malpractice such as surgical errors and hospital negligence have a higher risk of happening in foreign hospitals because medical standards are lower than in the US. Recently, a young New York woman who decided to go to The Dominican Republic to get a cheaper tummy tuck and liposuction died from a massive pulmonary embolism on the operating table.

Beverly Brignony was 28 years old. She was married and had a 4 year old daughter. She had gastric bypass surgery a year earlier and since she had lost 80 pounds. she was very excited about getting a tummy tuck and liposuction her friends said.

Because her flight was delayed, she arrived at The Dominican Republic Hospital late at night before the surgery started early the next morning. She may not have received a proper medical evaluation before the surgery and the medical staff may not have taken into account the higher risk of embolism related to the fact that she sat on a plane for several hours before the surgery.

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Ann Pfau is the Statewide Coordinating Judge of the New York Medical Malpractice Program and former chief administrative judge of the New York State Judiciary. In a recent article in the New York law Journal she looks at two interesting statute of limitations decisions recently handed down by the Appellate Division, First Department, both involving medical malpractice actions, one directly and one indirectly.

In Perez v. Fitzgerald, 2014 NY Slip Op. 00744 (1st Dept. Feb. 6, 2014), the court held that the statute of limitations period for chiropractic malpractice was three years, not the two and one-half years applicable to medical malpractice.

In Cabrera v. Collazo, 2014 NY Slip Op. 00611 (App. Div. 1st Dept. Feb. 4, 2014), the court put the bar on notice that, whatever the medical malpractice statute of limitations may be, an attorney may be liable for legal malpractice if attorney neglect causes the client to miss the statute of limitations­-even if the attorney’s death occurs before the statute runs.

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Nurses at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Long Island , NY may have committed medical malpractice by using the same insulin pen on multiple patients. At this point there is no formal proof that it happened but the warning came after a nurse was heard saying that it was acceptable to use a multidose insulin pen on different patients. To use a multidose pen on different patients is medical malpractice that can have deadly consequences for patients. Even though the pen has disposable needles, it can only be used for one patient because the blood can seep into the insulin cartridge and contaminate the hormone.

After the nurse’s comment was overheard, the hospital contacted more than 4000 patients that had received an injection with a multidose pen to be screened for HIV as well as Hepatits B and Hepatits C.

Read more in NewsDay

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Nurse understaffing by negligent hospitals can lead to medical malpractice that affect patients outcome. A recent study compared the 30 day mortality rate of more than 400,000 patients over 50 years old who underwent surgery in 300 hospitals in 9 different European countries to nurse staffing and nurse education for each hospital.

The study found that an increase in a nurses’ workload by one patient increased the likelihood of an inpatient dying within 30 days of admission by 7% , and every 10% increase in bachelor’s degree nurses was associated with a decrease in this likelihood by 7%. These associations imply that patients in hospitals in which 60% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of six patients would have almost 30% lower mortality than patients in hospitals in which only 30% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of eight patients.

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A recent study analyzed 147 medical malpractice claims related to Electronic Health Record (EHR) issues and identified that incorrect data entry in the EHR, inconsistency between paper and electronic records as well as system failures were contributing factors in close to 60% of the analyzed claims.

The study was released by CRICO, a patient safety and medical malpractice insurer for the Harvard medical community that includes more than 12,000 physicians, 22 hospitals, and 100,000-plus nurses, technicians, and other employees of Harvard-affiliated organizations. Over 30 years CRICO has built a large comparative database and developed specific tools to analyze medical malpractice claims and identified specific vulnerabilities that need to be addressed by hospitasl and physicians to better protect patients from medical errors.

Recently CRICO analyzed a year’s worth of medical malpractice claims and found that 147 were related to Electronic Health Record problems. Half of these incidents of malpractice resulted in in severe personal injury for the patient. The 147 claims cost a total of $61 million in direct payments and legal expenses.

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Cover_MedMysteries0225%281%29.jpgOften doctors fail to diagnose common variable immune deficiency (CVID). It takes an average of 6 years for patients to receive a correct CVID diagnosis because it is a rare form of immune deficiency that mimics other diseases and causes a variety of disparate ailments. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman describes the case of a woman who was submitted to numerous tests before being properly diagnosed with CVID. The woman’s oldest brother who is also a physician was diagnosed earlier with the same disorder and she kept telling the doctors and nurses about it but no one listened to her. Finally she was able to arrange a phone call between her brother and her hematologist. The hematologist listened to the brother because he was a doctor and then things started to move in the right direction. She started to receive infusions, the only way to treat CVID and the platelet count started to increase. After a few months she was in remission. She then saw two specialists who confirmed she had CVID a condition that so far has no cure and requires painful monthly infusions.

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