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 Tagged with new york hospital negligence

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Mount-Sinai-HospitalPatient safety, infection control staffing ratio as well as patient boarding and conditions are out of control at the Emergency Room of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Executives who 3 years ago hired medical experts to assess the ER department issues, are fully aware of the situation but are doing nothing to improve it. According to former employees at all levels, at Mount Sinai Hospital profit comes before patient safety.  Staffers and doctors who worked there, were so horrified by the conditions of the ER that most of them quit after a few months. Dr. Eric Barton was the head of the emergency department for the Mount Sinai hospital Network for less than a year. He told the New York Post that he had to leave because the organization was not caring for patients. Nurses who quit because of the horrendous wok conditions remember seeing patients going into cardiac arrest without anyone noticing. Patients requiring critical care are often not admitted in the critical care unit timely because it is overloaded. ER Nurses who according to medical safety standards are supposed to care for five to six patients a day are assigned 14 to 18 of them a day.

Globally Mount Sinai has a solid reputation because some excellent doctors work there. It ranks #3 in New York and #14 in the US Best Hospitals Honor Roll of the US News ranking. It also ranks nationally in 9 adult and 5 pediatric specialties. Additionally the hospital was rated a high performer in 4 adult specialties and 7 procedures and conditions. The problem with Mount Sinai is that to access this high ranked care, patients are being parked in very unsafe conditions for up to two days in the emergency room or in the nearby hallways. The conditions are so bad that a worker said the emergency room at Mount Sinai look like Times Square.  While the hospital ranked well in the US News ranking  it ranks very poorly  – 3,874 out of 4,221 hospitals – in term of patient satisfaction on the NY department of Health website.

Shortly after the Post denounced the horrendous conditions at the Emergency Room, Governor Cuomo announced that he had ordered the State Health Department to probe the allegations in the Post.

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Only one Manhattan acute care hospital obtained a Top A grade in the Spring 2018 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades: the NYC Health Hospitals –  Metropolitan in East Harlem.

Most of the others, NYU Langone Medical Center, NYC Health + Hospitals / Bellevue, Mount Sinai West, New York-Presbyterian , Northwell Health System – Lenox Hill Hospital, The Mount Sinai Hospital, NYC Health + Hospitals – Harlem and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s all obtained a C. Mount Sinai Beth Israel had the worst Manhattan score with a D on a scale of A for the best to F for the worst.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades is a nationwide bi-annual rating that focuses on acute care hospital errors, accidents, injuries and infections that collectively are the third leading cause of death in the United States. Based on the data provided by the report here is what we found for Manhattan hospitals.

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Kingsbrook Jewish Medical CenterA patient died at a NYC hospital ward after the hospital failed in its duty to protect him. A 77 year old patient at the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, was attacked last week by 65 year old Larry Hammond, another patient. The man was beaten in the head and suffered critical injury. He died five days later from his injuries. The hospital only contacted the police one day after the attack. Read more in the NY Daily News

New York hospitals are responsible for the health and the well being of their patients. They are licensed and regulated by Federal and State law and have to follow strict policies and procedures.  If a hospital fails to protect a patient, the hospital can be liable for the injury or the death of the patient. Read more about it on our Hospital Negligence page.

 

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Surgery at HospitalNew York hospitals are among the worst in the country according to a new analysis by the Empire Center based on ratings just released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).  Patients looking for a hospital can now go to the Medicare.gov website and compare the quality of care of hospitals in the country. The overall  rating goes from 1 star (worst score) to 5 stars (best score) and is based on 64 measures of quality.

Out of a total of 180 hospitals, only one hospital in New York State had a 5 stars ranking: the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. 12 hospitals scored 4 stars, among them only two of them were located in the New York City: The New York Presbyterian Hospital and the NYU Hospitals Center. 49 of them obtained a 3 stars rating. In NYC hospitals obtaining this score were the Lenox Hill Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital and New York Community Hospital of Brooklyn, Inc. 58 hospitals in New York State rated two stars. Among them those located in the city were Beth Israel Medical Center, Lutheran Medical Center, Mamonides Medical Center, Metropolitan Hospital Center, Montefiore Medical Center, New York Presbyterian/Queens, North Central Bronx Hospital, St Barnabas Hospital, St Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital and Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center. 35 New York hospitals only got 1 star. More than half of them are located in New York City and include Bellevue Hospital Center, Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Medical Center, Brooklyn Hospital Center at Downtown Campus, Coney Island Hospital, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Harlem Hospital Center, Interfaith Medical Center, Jacobi Medical Center, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, Kings County Hospital Center, Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center, New York Methodist Hospital, Queens Hospital Center, Richmond University Medical Center, St John’s Episcopal Hospital at South Shore, Staten Island University Hospital, University Hospital of Brooklyn (Downstate), Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.

The average star rating for New York State is 2.26 that’s just before Puerto Rico with 2.00, the Virgin Islands and Guam with 2.00 as well and the District of Columbia that comes last of all of the states with an average score of 1.43.

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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

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Lenox HillHospital negligence and abuse is not only related to patient care, it can also be related to how well the hospital protects the identity of its patients. Yesterday, a former employee of the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and his wife appeared in front of the Manhattan Supreme Court because they allegedly stole the personal information of more than 80 patients and use their credit cards to charge a total of $300,000 fraudulent charges at Saks Fifth Ave in Manhattan. They tried to charge over $1 million according to prosecutors. Kyle Steed and his wife pleaded not guilty to a 193-count indictment that included, grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, identity theft and possession of stolen property charges in a scheme that targeted elderly people. Read more in the NY Daily News

 

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