Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

A federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against HCA Inc., the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain saying that the cases in the class action need to be examined individually.

In April the hospital chain was sued in a claim it defrauded patients by directing its affiliated hospitals to staff nursing units below generally accepted levels.

The judge says those cases involve medical malpractice that should be examined on an individual basis, not in a consumer class-action.

For the full article.

A lawsuit has been filed by the widow of a Good Samaritan who attempted to rescue a woman’s purse after it had been snatched. The man chased after the thief and was halfway inside his car when the car crashed, pinning the Good Samaritan between the car and the building.

The man was immediately taken to Overland Park Regional Medical Center where he underwent surgery and was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital. While the purse thief was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, the new civil lawsuit alleges the doctors negligently treated the Good Samaritan after he came to the hospital.

The suit alleges medical malpractice in that the doctors waited too long to intervene, administered inappropriate antibiotics, and then waited too long to take him back to surgery.

For the full article.

In a new study recently released by the Center for Justice & Democracy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was exposed for providing substantial financial and strategic assistance to local front groups to influence state elections. This includes funding major media buys to smear local candidates. The report, entitled “The Secret Chamber – The Inner Workings of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Hijacking of an Election,” inspected newly-released papers and deposition testimony uncovered in connection with litigation surrounding the failed 2004 election bid of Deborah Senn for Washington State Attorney General.

Unfortunately, the Chamber of Commerce advocates on behalf of businesses and often overlooks the rights and needs of individual citizens, particularly with respect to the civil justice system.

To read the study.

The Medical Malpractice Myth, released last November, by Tom Baker explains how claims of frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits are false.

In reponse to this summer’s unsuccessful fifth attempt by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to cap non-economic damage awards at $250,000, medical malpractice lawsuits continue to be on the forefront of political debates.

The following article examines why Tom Baker’s book is a best attempt to synthesize the academic literature on medical malpractice.

To read the article.

A doctor working at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans on the day the levis broke during Hurricane Katrina is being charged with homicide in the death of four patients believed to be victims of “mercy killings.”

Autopsies performed on the four elderly patients reveal they died from a lethal cocktail, a mix of morphine and a central-nervous-system depressant, Versed. None of the four patients were receiving these drugs as part of their course of treatment.

For the full article.

Thanks to Connecticut's civil union law, which allows gay to sue for loss of consortium, a lesbian couple has sued two doctors for medical malpractice. The suit alleges the doctors of treated one of the women for ovarian cancer when she actually had cancer of the appendix. As a result, the patient underwent years of chemotherapy while the cancer spread.

The woman is suing for damages and the woman’s partner is suing for damages on her behalf for loss of consortium. This is the first suit of its kinds since the state enacted its civil union law last year.

For the full article.

Often drug companies will find creative ways to get around FDA regulations concerning drug marketing. Man times, drug companies will pay doctors to promote their drugs, including the “off label” uses.

The FDA does not allow drug manufacturers to market their drugs for unapproved uses. Therefore, drug companies will often pay doctors like Dr. Peter Gleason, a Maryland psychiatrist, to speak at industry conferences. In the case of Dr. Gleason, he has recently been charged with promoting the drug Xyrem for purposes other than those approved by the federal government.

Xyrem is a narcolepsy drug but Dr. Gleason advocated its use in treating depression and for pain relief.

For the full article.

A new study from the Institute of Medicine released Thursday found that medication errors harm 1.5 million people, kill several thousand people and cost $3.5 billion per year in the United States.

Common errors are giving many times over the recommended dose, giving the wrong medication, and under medicating patients. Systemic changes are needed in the system to curtail the ill effects of medication errors. One of the proposed changes includes an electronic prescription service, however this system is used in only 6% of the nation’s hospitals.

The report also urged the Food and Drug Administration to improve and standardize the drug information leaflets given consumer because information on drug labels is often confusing and an important cause of medication errors.

For the full article.

A Franklin County jury today awarded $17.8 million in a medical malpractice case brought by the family of a 5 year old girl. This is the largest historical money award in the county awarded by a jury.

The $17.8 million will cover the future medical costs, education and pain and suffering of a 5-year-old whose brain was damaged before elective surgery at Children's Hospital nearly five years ago.

As a result the child cannot speak, has cerebral palsy and will use a wheelchair for life, one of her attorneys said. Doctors were preparing to remove a benign cyst from the neck of the then-4-month-old infant when something went wrong with the anesthesia on Sept. 25, 2001.

The jury found the anesthesiologist responsible for the girl’s injuries and determined he had failed to let the girl recover properly from a first attempt to administer anesthesia and didn't respond quickly to warning signs that something was wrong.

For the full article.

Under Oregon law, jury awards against public agencies are limited to $100,000 in general damages and $100,000 in special damages. Earlier this month, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that the family of an infant who was mistreated at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) can sue for more than the $200,000 allowed against public agencies.

The reasoning is that while the damage cap applies to OHSU, a public entity, it is unconstitutional to prevent the suit from seeking the full damages against the individual employees. The family of the boy, who suffered permanent brain damage in 1998 while in intensive care at OHSU Hospital, requested more than $17 million in the lawsuit to cover past and future medical expenses, lost earning capacity and pain and suffering.

For the full article.

A doctor is the subject of a medical malpractice lawsuit in the death of a woman for whom the doctor illegally prescribed a hydrogen-peroxide solution to treat her multiple sclerosis.

The same doctor is being sued in a second medical malpractice case by the widow of a man who died of prostate cancer in 2004. The man sought treatment form the doctor who gave him intravenous hydrogen-peroxide treatments and falsely diagnosed him as having Lyme disease. The doctor next prescribed testosterone, which caused the man’s prostate cancer to rapidly advance and resulted in his death about six weeks later.

For the full article.

The Tripler Army Medical Center has admitted liability in a birth trauma case set for trial on August 15, 2006. The trial next month will focus on damages in the case of a newborn baby who was mistakenly given carbon dioxide instead of oxygen for more than 40 minutes after his birth.

As a result of the mistake, the boy, now 19 months, is severely brain damaged. The parents have sued for medical malpractice and future medical expenses, which are expected to be quite steep given that for as long as he lives, the child will need around-the-clock nursing care, relying on medical devices to eat and breathe.

Upon birth, the boy was healthy but the hospital decided to give his breathing a boost by putting him on oxygen. As it turns out, he didn’t receive oxygen at all. After the infant was given carbon dioxide, his health began to deteriorate. The hospital personnel realized the 40 minutes later that tubing was connected to the wrong gas tank, which caused the child’s heart to stop, necessitating resuscitation.

For the full article.

The House Health Subcommittee pledged to work together and find new solutions to medical malpractice reform in a bipartisan move last week.

Possible solutions included the use of health courts, and an “early offer” reform, which would allow hospitals to make offers for economic damages and attorneys fees within 180 days after a medical malpractice lawsuit is filed.

To read the full article.

A Convalescent Hospital was fined $65,000 and cited by the state Department of Health Services when an 83 year-old woman choked to death on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Monday.

The woman had continually been assessed by the home as at risk for choking. Special instructions were given to staff to take precuations to ensure the woman was fed while upright, and that she took small bites interspersed with liquids while eating. The sticky consistency of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich should have raised a red flag with the nurse who gave the woman the sandwich saying “you promised you would eat.” Moreover, according to the state report, the staff did not sit her upright or remind her to take small bites.

The woman was found ten minutes later, unresponsive, and she died from chocking shortly thereafter.

For the full article.

When a 52 year-old woman came into an Emergency Room she was quickly diagnosed with a stroke, brain hemorrhage and blood clot. The woman desperately needed a neurosurgeon. However, after eleven hours of looking for a specialist, the nearest surgeon available was 260 miles away.

The surgery was performed, however the woman died 10 days later, likely the result of her deteriorating condition as she waited for a neurosurgeon. The unavailability of specialty surgeons, particularly neurosurgeons, hand surgeons and ophthalmologists, is not uncommon in the nation’s ER rooms as patients flock to emergency rooms that don’t have the capacity for all who arrive on their doorstep.

In one state, Hospital CEOs and physicians are working to fix the problem of lack of available specialists by coordinating specialists regionally and infusing money into emergency departments.

For the full article.

In an editorial responding to Senator Rick Santorum’s outspoken views on the so-called medical malpractice crisis, Larry Smar, a spokesperson for Pennsylvania treasurer Bob Casey cited the one-third decline in medical malpractice lawsuits between 2000 and 2004. Furthermore, Smar quoted a malpractice insurance expert who declared recently, “In Pennsylvania, the malpractice crisis is over.”

Moreover, categorizing medical malpractice lawsuits as “frivolous” is simply incorrect. According to a recent Harvard study, only 3% of all malpractices claims are filed by patients who didn’t experience injuries, and these suits were for the most part dismissed or resolved without payment.

For the full article.

Last Thursday, Governor Blagojevich proposed measures that are likely to reduce medical errors that kill nearly 4,000 Illinoisans a year. This measure comes a year after the Illinois legislature enacted caps on medical malpractice cases limiting non-economic damages awarded against individual physicians to $500,000 and limiting non-economic damages awarded against hospitals to $1,000,000.

On of Blagojevich’s proposed measures is a voluntary computer prescription program which national medical experts have estimated may reduce errors by 80 percent. With more than 750 medications that sound and look alike, this measure could be particularly effective at reducing prescription mix-ups and mis-fillings.

Blagojevich also proposed more focus on medical practices by creating a new patient safety division to standardize medication practices and reduce mistakes. While these measures will likely curtail instances of medical errors, the fact remains that the medical malpractice damage caps enacted last year strip Illinoisians of their right to fair and just compensation if they are not saved by preventative measures like the Governor proposes.

For the full article.

An editorial in the Pocono Record, calls attention to the comments of Senator Rick Santorum Rep-PA, who held a news conference on June 1, 2006, speaking out against the “medical malpractice crisis.”

What Senator Santorum didn’t reveal was the $350,000 he and his wife were awarded in a medical malpractice lawsuit against their chiropractor.

For the letter.

The state Supreme Court will hear case on what information must be disclosed by an obstetrician when advising a patient to terminate a pregnancy

The state Supreme Court will hear an appeal of a decision by the state Superior Court that a jury could decide "[w]hat medical information is material and must be disclosed by an obstetrician when advising a patient to terminate a pregnancy and what medical information is material when the patient asks if the 'baby' is already there."

The case in question involved a doctor who a woman claims incorrectly told her she was not aborting a human life. The question centers around the discrepancy in meanings of “human life” and “baby” between the doctor and the patient.

A wrongful death action was dismissed but an appellate court ruled that the woman could sue for damages involving medical malpractice.

For the full article.

A state appeals court has overturned another portion of last year's changes to the state law governing medical malpractice lawsuits.

In a 6-1 decision issued Thursday, the state Court of Appeals struck down changes that required medical malpractice plaintiffs to give up the privacy of their medical records when they file their claims.

It's the latest ruling by state judges reversing parts of the law, designed to encourage speedy out-of-court settlements, penalize parties who file frivolous lawsuits and cap pain-and-suffering awards in medical malpractice cases at $350,000.

In February, the state Supreme Court struck down a section of the law that allowed defendants to have cases heard in their home counties. Judges have also overturned a rule requiring one side to pay the other's legal fees.

Source: Augusta Chronicle – Tuesday, July 18, 2006.

The governor signed a bill yesterday that allows the state Insurance Department to access more information and have more control over medical malpractice insurance rates. The state insurance director now has the power to veto medical malpractice rates that are excessive, inadequate, or "unfairly discriminatory," but rates don’t require the director's approval before being enacted.

The efforts are aimed to keep physicians practicing in the state by lowering the rates they pay for malpractice insurance. Last year, the state capped non-economic damages at $500,000 per defendant per case, which limited the amounts that severely injured victims of malpractice and their families are able to recover. Governor Blunt misunderstands the "tort reform" debate and suggests the reason rates are so high is due to excessive medical malpractice lawsuits.

If this is the case, why are insurance premium rates coming under such strict scrutiny? Further, profits and executive pay at insurance companies this year are up, indicating the source of the excessive rates is the insurance companies driving up rates for doctors and not, as Governor Blunt suggests, “excessive litigation.”

Continue reading "Governor Blunt does not understand the real culprits of high malpractice rates" »

If you are a concerned citizen who would like to write your congressperson with concerns about recently or soon to be enacted legislation, an online directory for the United States 109th Congress exists for your use.

To contact Illinois Congress people

To contact Congress members of other states

On Wednesday, a Kane County jury in the 16th circuit awarded $21 million to a woman left paralyzed by an error in a routine procedure in 2003.

The woman, a then 37-year old mother of three, had undergone a routine procedure at Provena St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin, and was recovering nicely when a nurse incorrectly disconnected a catheter and allowed air into her blood vessel.

The woman next suffered an embolism which caused a stroke. The stroke caused the woman to suffer severe paralysis and the loss of her ability to speak. The jury awarded $8.5 million in past and future medical care, $500,000 for pain and suffering and $12.5 million for loss of a normal life in this medical malpractice case.

For the full article.

After undergoing stomach surgery in August 2004, it was discovered a sponge was left in a man’s stomach causing him extreme pain and agony. The man died of pancreatic cancer a year later, unable to undergo chemotherapy due to his weakened condition – the result of the sponge.

To avoid a potential conflict of interest, a retired judge will hear the $1.75 million medical malpractice lawsuit against Sentara Obici Hospital filed by the estate of the man, a former judge.

The judge served in the 5th judicial district and the current bench recused themselves from the case to avoid a conflict of interest.

For the full article.

A lawsuit was settled yesterday between a hospital and a 35 year old man who suffered a severe spinal cord injury when doctors at the hospital failed to evaluate and treat the man after his bicycle collided with a car.

The man came into the hospital with immobility of his legs and weakness in his hands but the doctors did not ask for a neurology or neurosurgery consultation. As a result, 9 days later the man was diagnosed with a cervical spinal cord compression and underwent neck surgery to ease the compression.

However, despite the surgeon’s best attempts, the man now lives in a nursing facility and can walk only a short distance with the aid of a walker.

For the full article.

The trends suggest "no." Lower medical malpractice lawsuits and claims began before the "tort reform" began. This indicates there was never really a “crisis” in the first place. Despite this fact, states around the country continue to implement "tort reforms" to limit the rights of victims of medical malpractice and hinder justice. In fact, in 2005, the Illinois legislature passed a cap on non-economic damages in Illinois medical malpractice lawsuits rather than letting a jury decide the proper justice. Currently, Illinois medical malpractice lawsuits' non-economic damages are limited to $500,000 against individual doctors and $1 million against hospitals.

This editorial asks how these changes can happen without careful examination of the facts by legislatures.

For the editorial download file.

The president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) recently defended lawyers who are being unfairly targeted as sole reasons of rising healthcare costs. Although the Senate recently correctly rejected a bill to cap damages in medical malpractice lawsuits, Suggs states that politicians are using tort reform as a way to raise money for their presidential platforms.

Suggs suggests that insurance companies deserve the blame and are profiting from increased medical malpractice premiums. Moreover, the parties most often neglected in the debate are those who are permanently and severely injured due to a physician’s negligence. For these individuals and families, no amount of money will ever be enough to compensate them for their loss. With medical malpractice lawsuit caps, they are limited from obtaining justice.

Suggs provides the following statistics to demonstrate that attorneys do not deserve blame for the so-called medical malpractice crisis:
• Medical malpractice payouts have remained flat for more than 10 years, and over the last four years have been dropping.
• Between 2001 and 2004, the number of payouts on behalf of doctors fell about 14 percent.

To read the full article.

One state's controversial futile care law is at the center of controversy in a case involving a 29 year old woman who fell into a vegetative state after her breathing tube became disconnected.

The law allows hospitals to remove life support in cases deemed medically futile. The law also requires that a hospital committee review the decision and give the family 10 days notice to find another facility to take the patient. This may mean the hospital could pull the plug before an independent investigation has been conducted as to a medical error.

In this case, the woman was found unresponsive by nurses after the breathing tube of the woman became dislodged. The woman had been on the breathing tube for a month after doctors performed an emergency cesarean section. The cesarean was performed after the woman’s visits to the emergency room for leg pains, chest pains and shortness of breath, were met with repeated answers from hospital staff that “nothing was wrong.” Eventually, the last time the woman came to the hospital complaining of symptoms, a test found blood clots in her leg and an emergency cesarean section was performed.

For the full article.

In an effort to pre-empt a federal judge from ruling against them in a hearing scheduled for Friday, July 14, the White House announced on Friday that more than 8 million of the 55 million Medicaid recipients will be exempt from the proof of citizenship requirement.

For these 8 million, the exemption exists because they established their citizenship by applying for either Medicare or Supplemental Security Income. This exemption will cover many people with mental retardation who have never worked and to many nursing home residents.

For the full article.

On Friday, one state's Supreme Court reversed a 2004 ruling that limited non-economic damages in all medical malpractice lawsuits to $350,000. Instead, the court restored a jury award of $1.2 million to the family of a woman who suffered a heart attack after being released from the hospital days earlier when she complained of chest pains.

The court held that in medical malpractice lawsuits where a victim has died, there can be two awards for non-economic damages: a survival action for what the deceased endured and could have collected if the deceased survived, and a second award for wrongful death that would go to the family of the deceased for their suffering.

For the full article.

In November 2004, state voters approved a constitutional amendment by an overwhelming 5-1 margin making medical error records in hospitals available to patients. The availability of records would allow prospective clients to assess a physician’s history of errors before signing up for treatment or surgery.

Since enactment, the amendment has been the subject of debate in the legislature and in two lawsuits. Specifically, there’s an argument as to whether the amendment applies retroactively or prospectively. One court has ruled that patients can request records now from dates before the November 2, 2004 enactment date. Another court ruled the records can only be requested for hospitalizations occurring after the November 2, 2004 date.

The issue will now go to the state Supreme Court. The issue is three-fold: when can records connected to medical errors become available to injured patients and potential patients, which records must be disclosed, and can these records be used in medical malpractice lawsuits?

For the full article.

The NJHA Collaborative to Improve Quality of Care and Patient Safety in the ICU," part of the NJHA Quality Institute, announced the results upon completion of a two year program dedicated to improving the quality of care in hospital intensive care units.

The results show that a potential for 216 deaths were averted due to the participation of 18 hospitals in implementing higher standards of care. Bloodstream infections in intensive care patients were reduced by 73%. The occurrence of ventilator-associated pneumonia fell 55%.

The program, launched in 2004, required hospital teams to undergo an intensive examination of the policies and practices in their intensive care units. The program required the hospitals to implement best care practices in their intensive care units that will be shared with hospitals nationwide. While deaths were averted due to these quality care implementations, costs were also reduced at participating hospitals as the avoidance of pneumonia and bloodstream infections saved an estimated $11 million in medical costs.

For the full article.

A Wall Street Journal article by Laura Landro, on Jun 28, 2006 entitled “The Informed Patient: Hospitals Combat Errors At the 'Hand-Off'” discusses communication difficulties at hospitals. Due to growing concern that communication problems are the largest source of medical errors, hospitals have implemented communication improvement programs to deter the problems. Specifically, problems occur during shift changes when the new staff is not apprised of a patient’s situation.

Common types of errors that result from these shift-change communication difficulties are giving a patient the wrong medication or reviving a patient who has a "do not resuscitate" order.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has begun requiring hospitals to establish procedures that address this “hand-off” communication.

Another article on the much debated Health Courts model, a proposed alternative to reduce medical malpractice insurance costs. Among the concerns centering around the Health Courts model are the elimination of a victim’s right to trial by jury. Instead, the Health Court would arbitrarily distribute monetary amounts to victims of medical malpractice for their pain and suffering, a task left to the jury in a medical malpractice case litigated by the court system.

Furthermore, many chosen to sit on Health Courts would not be the unbiased citizens traditionally composing a jury, but rather politically appointed and medically-trained judges who share a professional background with the defendant doctors in most cases.

For the full article.

A Wall Street Journal article suggests the numbers released earlier last month by Harvard Professor Donald Berwick stating improved conditions in US hospitals may be inaccurate.

The study employed 3,000 hospitals who implemented six steps to improve treatment and conditions in hospitals, and the results showed that 122,300 lives had been saved by this practice. This article examines the difficulty in determining whether a patient dies due to a single medical error or procedure. The results may be skewed as the numbers before the study are compared to those after the study, thus the inability to determine if the results came from the effort or other factors is great.

For the full article.

Levin & Perconti is currently litigating a medical malpractice case against 2 physicians and the University of Chicago hospital for negligently performing brachytherapy on a patient with prostate cancer. The doctors placed radioactive seeds in or near the rectal wall causing a burn injury, radiation proctitis, and the loss of the patient’s colon and bladder.

The seeds should have been implanted within the prostate and many seeds were not, therefore causing the rectal burn injury.

The case is expected to go to trial later this year.

Levin and Perconti is currently litigating a case against Walgreen’s Co. for mis-filling a prescription for an anti-organ rejection medication called Prograf which led to rejection of a patient’s liver, necessitating a 2nd liver transplant and multiple hospitalizations.

The case is expected to go to trial later this year.

A Cook County, Illinois jury on July 6, 2006 awarded a verdict in the amount of $1,030,767.47 to a nine-year-old girl who suffered permanent injury to the brachial plexus nerves in her right shoulder in a medical malpractice case. The trial was presided over by the Honorable Patricia Banks and the verdict rendered after 7 hours of deliberations over the course of two days. Once it was established that the baby’s right shoulder had become stuck behind the mother’s pubic bone during her delivery in April 1997, a condition called shoulder dystocia, the safest and simplest procedure was to place the mother into the McRoberts maneuver (which requires two assistants to raise the mother’s knees to her chest) and for a nurse to apply steady pressure to the area above the mother’s pubic bone (suprapubic pressure) while the obstetrician applies gentle downward pressure to the baby’s head. The jury found that during the birth of the child, the defendant obstetrician failed to use appropriate maneuvers and applied excessive force in his attempt to free the child’s right shoulder from behind her mother’s pubic bone.

Continue reading "Cook County Jury Awards $1.03 Million in Birth Trauma Medical Malpractice Case" »

A class action lawsuit was filed last week on behalf of nurses against hospitals in Chicago, Memphis, San Antonio and Albany charging violations of anti-trust laws.

The nurses' allegations state the existency of a conspiracy to set a wage limit for nurses by exchanging salary information with each other and conspiring not to raise wages past a certain limit. Many blame the prevalence of low wages for nursing positions to the shortage of nurses nationwide. Additionally, staffing issues are largely attributable to the problems associated with Illinois nursing home abuse, Illinois medical malpractice, and national issues with the health industry.

The suit alleges that as a result of the conspiracy and low wages, nurses were underpaid by the following amounts annually in each respective city: Memphis $14,000; Albany $6,200; Chicago $5,400; and San Antonio $1,300.

To read the full article.

Consumer Reports Web Watch and the Health Improvement Institute have recently released a joint venture in Heathratings.org created for consumers to know which health information websites are the most reliable and credible.

The service is free and it ranks sites like WebMD, Yahoo! Health and MayoClinic.com.

To try the service, click here.