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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Stephen%20Mackauf.pngOur Partner New York Medical Malpractice Attorney Stephen Mackauf was quoted extensively in the January Issue of Physician Risk Management. In the article “Causation: A problem for all in missed cancer cases” Stephen Mackauf explains that missed cancer claims typically revolve around factors such as:
– issues of fact, such as a patient claiming she reported a lump and the doctor says she didn’t – whether a patient’s refusal of a test or treatment was documented – whether a patient is able to prove significant harm caused by the delay in diagnosis

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Failure to diagnose a brain tumor can have horrible consequences on the life of an individual. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman writes about the dramatic story of Bebe Bahnsen, an outgoing and successful Washington newspaper reporter whose life was destroyed because doctors failed to diagnose a growing brain tumor that was pressing on her left frontal lobe, the portion of the brain responsible for speech, movement, emotional regulation and reasoning. Symptoms started with mild depression and as the tumor grew Bebe sustained a prolonged suicidal depression. Her social life and career were totally destroyed. For years she was hospitalized periodically, submitted to electroshock treatments, and prescribed numerous psychiatric drugs until finally a neurologist did the right thing. Dr Gawronski, now practicing in Baton Rouge, ordered an MRI and realized that a small benign brain tumor that had been previously diagnosed years before had reached the size of a lime and was the reason for her worsening mental illness.

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Medical Malpractice has a higher risk of occurring when a patient transfers between various treatment sites and caregivers even within the same institution. A well coordinated transition between various healthcare settings can reduce the risk of medical errors, decrease hospital re-admission rates, avoid the duplication of services and reduce the waste of resources.

Medical professionals as well patients and their families can find valuable information on the newly updated and expanded Joint Commission’s “Transition of care Portal“. New and noteworthy articles include:

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Failure to diagnose cancer in teenagers may be medical malpractice. Because cancer in young adults and teenagers count for only 1% of all diagnosed cancers, they have a higher risk of being misdiagnosed. A recent report “Improving Diagnosis: Teenage Cancer Trust Report on Improving the Diagnostic Experience of Young People with Cancer” was recently published by the Teenage Cancer Trust in London. This report discusses challenges to early diagnosis of cancer for teenagers and offers guidance for clinicians and families to improve care for these patients.

 

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To reduce medical malpractice, the Institute of Medicine called for the measurement and reporting of physicians quality in its reports To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (1999) and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century (2001). More than 10 years later, it remains very difficult for patients in most states to find quality information on physicians.

A recent Sate Report Card on Transparency of Physicians Quality Information, authored by Francois de Brantes, MS, MBA, Elizabeth Bailey, MPH, Jessica DiLorenzo, MA and Michael Moses, MS from the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute in Newtown, Conn shows that only Minnesota and Washington State have a high level of transparency on physicians. California is somewhat transparent but for all other states patients have little access to information on the quality of their physicians.

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Jappa.jpegFailure to diagnose May-Thurner Syndrome may be medical malpractice that can lead to post-thrombotic syndrome, potentially fatal pulmonary embolism, pulmonary hypertension, and in the worst case paradoxical embolism.

In a recent article published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, the author Jaclyn Leitner who practice general medicine in Newark, New Jersey describes the case of a 28 year old female marathon runner who visited her office with groin pain. The author explains how to properly diagnose May-Thurner syndrome and the available treatments.

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In a very sad medical malpractice case a 16 year old girl died of brain cancer after none of the 13 doctors who failed to diagnose the brain tumor ordered an MRI. Natasha Simmons had all the symptoms of a brain tumor: headaches, numbness, back pain, vomiting and problems with her eyesight. She visited 13 doctors over a one year period but none of them ordered an MRI. An ER doctor refused a scan and said they were reserved for life and death situations. 11 months later, an MRI was finally done but it was too late. Natasha Simmons was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor and died 8 days later.

Read more in the Huffington Post

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Until recently when a patient with prostate cancer was developing resistance to drugs that block testosterone, the hormone that fuels the cancer growth, his urologist would refer him to an oncologist who would start chemotherapy. The situation recently changed with the arrival on the market of new drugs such as sipuleucel-T, radium 223, enzalutamide, abiraterone, and cabazitaxel. These new drugs target so-called “castrate-resistant” patients and can be prescribed by either the urologist or the oncologist.

As of Today there is a lot of confusion about these new drugs. Urologists and oncologists are not clear on whether patients should be treated similarly or which drug should be used and in what order to be the most effective. The lack of communication between specialists as well as the financial incentive in keeping a patient as long as possible may be detrimental to the patient and may lead to medical malpractice.

In an article published Today in the Journal Urologic Oncology, urologist Ralph de Vere White and medical oncologist Primo Lara, Jr. of the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center provide an in depth look at the situation and demonstrate that better guidelines and coordination between specialists are necessary to deliver cost effective and efficient care to patients with castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).

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Doctors often fail to diagnose cancer in women with dense breast tissue because mammograms screenings are not reliable for women with this condition. Recent statistics and studies also show that women with dense breast tissue have a higher risk of developing breast cancer. Therefore advocacy groups have been pushing for legislation that requires doctors to report breast density to their patient. In New York, failure to inform a patient about dense breast tissue is now against the law and may support a claim of medical malpractice. The legislation was signed by Governor Cuomo on July 23 2012 and took effect last January. A total of 18 states have enacted dense breast notification laws, and 10 more have laws pending. Who is supposed to do the reporting and what they are supposed to tell patients varies from state to state.

In “Dense Breast Legislation in the United States: State of the States” published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, Soudabeh Fazeli Dehkordy, MD, MPH, and Ruth C. Carlos, MD, MS, from the Department of Radiology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine in Ann Arbor provide a detailed review of the state of this law at states and federal level.

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Medication%20error.jpgEvery drug with two names, brand name and generic name, is a medication error waiting to happen, writes Theresa Brown in her latest Opinion in The New York Times blog.
A system that would keep only the brand name with a “-G” appended at the end of the name for generic would make more sense and reduce confusion.

Read the complete opinion

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