Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

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.

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.

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.

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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.

In a recent malpractice lawsuit, a New York State Supreme Court Jury, Erie County, awarded $6 million for past and future pain and suffering and $2.8 million for medical expenses and lost of wages to a man who lost his leg as the result of medical malpractice by his surgeon. His ex-wife was also awarded $350,000 for loss of services.

Donald Schultz was a 35 year old public safety dispatcher for the City of Tonawanda, NY, when he broke his ankle in 2004. After initial treatment he still felt pain on the side of his foot near the little toe and made an appointment with Dr. Michael A. Parentis at the Knee Center of WNY. Dr Parentis performed 12 surgeries on his foot and leg. He started with surgeries on the little toe then amputated it. After the patient developed an infection, the doctor also amputated the fourth toe. As the pain continued the doctor continued to operate up until July 2009 when he amputated the leg below the knee.

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