Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

Levin & Perconti has filed a medical malpractice lawsuit in Cook County against Advocate Health Care Systems and various doctors for failure to diagnose bladder cancer in a 59 year old woman.

The failure was due to poor communication between the woman’s primary care physicians and a specialist. This poor communication resulted in the woman not having a crucial cystoscopy that would have diagnosed her cancer at a time when the cancer would have been treatable. Instead, the test was given to the woman when it was too late – the cancer had spread to her bowel, colon and eventually throughout her abdomen.

The primary care physicians misunderstood the woman’s symptoms and their significance and failed to inform the patient that failure to have a cystoscopy could be fatal. The woman’s symptoms included blood in her urine, and painful and frequent urination.

The woman’s family is suing the hospital and the doctors for wrongful death in failing to diagnose and treat bladder cancer.

Levin & Perconti has filed a medical malpractice lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County against nurses and doctors the University of Illinois at Chicago Hospital.

The basis of the lawsuit is that while the patient was in the hospital, suffering from injuries due to a brain hemorrhage, the hospital staff failed to monitor the pressure building up inside the patient’s brain. As a result, this pressure increased and the skull pressed the brain down into the patient’s spinal cord, resulting in a brain stem herniation. The patient is now severely brain damaged due to the hospital’s negligence.

A lawsuit will be filed later this month in Lake County against Condell Medical Center in a case involving a woman who died of heart failure, leaving 2 children aged 9 and 14. The woman visited the emergency room and was given an X-ray and released. Two hours later when the woman returned, she had fluid in the sack around her heart. The hospital now claims that the x-ray taken before her death is missing.

The patient’s family is suing the hospital for medical malpractice, spoliation of records and wrongful death claiming that the family’s ability to successfully proceed with the lawsuit is substantially impaired because of the missing X-ray.

Illinois has a law called the X-ray retention act that mandates hospitals retain all X-ray records for 5 years after the records are taken. To view the law: 210 ILCS 90/1, click here.

The law firm of Levin & Perconti is representing the family.

After the Diagnosis -- How to Look Out for Yourself or a Loved One, by Donna L. Pikula
Patients need to do their homework. "They also need to learn to listen to their instinct -- that little voice inside them that tells them whether something seems right or not."

To purchase.

YOU: The Smart Patient : An Insider's Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment , by Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet C. Oz
A handbook to help everyone to get the best health care possible -- by making everyone into their own medical detective.

To purchase.

Trust your instincts. This is the message being echoed by consumer health advocates nationwide as thousands of citizens die each year from medical errors. If you suspect you have been misdiagnoses or something is “not right,” speak up, or it may be too late by the time your physician realizes your condition has worsened.

To ensure you receive the appropriate medical care make sure you have a friend or family member at your bedside 24/7 to keep track of things and get what you need. These friends and family members can also serve to aid you after you determine you have been a victim of medical malpractice.

Other suggestions are to log all treatment, names of caregivers, and be assertive about pain relief. If you're having surgery, have the physician sign the site beforehand to be sure they work on the right area. Ask lots of questions at the doctor’s office and prepare questions ahead of time to address all the concerns you may have about your condition and the course of treatment prescribed.

With nursing shortages and overworked employees in hospitals nationwide, an additional responsibility has fallen on the consumer to question the treatments and care provided.

For the full article.

In Senate hearings last week, legislators considered a senate bill that would test different proposals to reduce medical malpractice insurance costs. One of the proposals, the Health Court Model, meets strong opposition from the American Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA) and the American Bar Association (ABA) because the model denies those injured by a hospital’s negligence their access to the court system, constitutional due process rights and right to a jury trial.

Among many concerns, the Health Court model would be an administrative nightmare – a bureaucratic process run by political appointees charged with the impossible task of formulating a uniform system of compensation for victims of medical malpractice. Given the uniqueness of each individual citizen, their potential injuries from malpractice and their personal and family lives, this system would under compensate many victims and their loved ones who are victims of irreparable harm due to a hospital’s negligence.

In addition, those appointed to sit on health courts would not be unbiased jurors or judges, but rather self interested politically appointed individuals susceptible to influence by lobbying from special interest groups including insurance companies and health industry representatives – those groups who stand to benefit the most from the proposed reform.

The Health Court Model is also strongly opposed by former victims of medical malpractice and consumer groups, who have both issued strong statements in opposition of the model which can be found here:

Medical Malpractice Victims Letter

Consumer Groups Letter

In addition, the Center for Justice and Democracy has issued a working paper entitled “Why Health Courts are Unconstitutional,” which can be accessed here.

To view the press release.

Levin & Perconti filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Advocate Trinity Hospital in Illinois.

The suit alleges medical malpractice in the wrongful death of a 70 year old man who died when the hospital failed to observe, assess, evaluate and report the patient’s changing conditions to his doctor and family members. The man developed pressure ulcers which became infected due to inadequate care.

The hospital then failed to appropriately treat the infection and provide nutrition and hydration to the man. Eventually the man died of multiple infected pressure ulcers, malnutrition, dehydration and sepsis.

June 14, 2006 marked the deadline set 18 months ago by Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor who organized a campaign to prevent infections and mistakes in the nation’s hospitals.

Berwick challenged participating hospitals, who promised to implement at least some of 6 suggested steps to improve care as well as report mortality rates. The results show that an estimated 122,300 lives were saved at about 3,100 participating hospitals.

Some of the steps implemented included deploying rapid response teams to patients whose vitals drop rapidly, giving patients antibiotics before surgery to prevent infections, and encouraging lower ranking employees to call for help at the sign of trouble.

For the full article.

Over the past five years, premiums at Medical Mutual Insurance Company of North Carolina have rose 45%, more proof that insurance companies, not lawyers, increase insurance costs for doctors. The increased premiums have raised margins at the company and resulted in large bonuses for executives at the company.

There are currently four medical malpractice bills pending in the legislature in North Carolina. One bill would require lawyers to report their earnings.

These increases in premiums may be unwarranted given that nationally medical malpractice costs have been trending downward over the last year.

For the full article.

In their advocacy for "tort reform," proponents ignore real economic factors and largely skew the economics in favor of insurance companies. A recent article provided an accurate description of the lengthy and meticulous screening process by which a case become a legitimate medical malpractice lawsuit. Many of the potential cases are screened out of the system before a jury even has the opportunity to consider the facts. In the event a case goes to jury, only one out of three plaintiffs prevail.

The true economic reality is that even litigation will not adequately restore an individual to their previously healthy condition after a doctor's malpractice and medical errors. The only solution available is to award monetary damages.

"Tort reform" allows potential wrongdoers to continue to operate with immunity and without adequate punishment. With "tort reform", the quality of care would not increase, but decrease as wrongdoers are not deterred from committing harmful errors. Those who best stand to benefit from tort reform are the insurance companies and not the patients or even doctors.

For the full article.

Three reports issued by the Institute for Medicine conclude that the nation’s emergency rooms are overcrowded and staff in the ER often don’t have the expertise to treat those seriously ill patients who arrive at the hospital.

Long waits for treatment are common and ambulances sometimes wait hours to unload patients who have called for help. Further, ERs in the United States lack the capabilities and capacity to respond to large disasters or epidemics.

While the population and number of ER visits in the United States are increasing, emergency rooms are closing and hospitals are decreasing the number of beds available to treat patients.

For the full article.

A jury awarded a $4 million verdict to a Washington hospital who sued a Louisiana hospital for fraud and negligent misrepresentation when two doctors from the hospital wrote glowing recommendations for a colleague who had a narcotics abuse problem.

In 2002, one of the doctor’s patients suffered severe brain damage during a routine procedure. A malpractice suit was settled for $8.5 million by the patient’s family. This marks the first time one hospital has successfully sued another for recommending an impaired or incompetent doctor, an all too common practice in the medical industry.

For the full article:
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Registered nurses are, on average, 47 years-old in the United States and that number is on the rise. Despite the shortage, pay in the field remains relatively low. The solution lies increase government spending on nursing education, increase salaries, and improve conditions in our nation’s hospital. Shortages are often blamed for the problems in our state of Illinois nursing home abuse and Illinois medical malpractice.

To read the full article:
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