Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

The victims of product liability and wrongful death have begun to sue Davol Inc., the manufacturer of the hernia repair device called Composix Kugel Mesh Patch. Some of the patches have failed some time after hernia surgeries causing serious injuries and death. The use of the defective product has caused perforated bowels, has abnormally attached itself to other organs or passageways and has stuck to other internal organs. Deaths were beginning to occur at least 21 months before the first Kugel Mesh recall would take place.

A woman who underwent a procedure last year with unsterilized equipment is launching a class-action lawsuit against the hospital for medical malpractice. At least 3,000 other patients were treated with unsterilized equipment and had to undergo testing for HIV, hepatitis and other diseases. The claim alleges that the HIV and hepatitis testing caused patients to endure pain and suffering, mental distress, loss of income, medical costs and loss of enjoyment of life.

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After a state Supreme Court ruled against her and held that the Carnival cruise line was not liable for the medical malpractice of one of its doctors, the girl, who was rendered sterile from an infection caused by the doctor’s failure to diagnose appendicitis, has filed a petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. In the petition, lawyers for the girl argue that the cruise line should be held liable under theories of agency and control. Passengers were made to believe that the doctor was a part of the cruise line's crew, and passengers requiring medical care had no choice but to use the doctor selected by the cruise line.

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Almost four years after medical malpractice reforms in Texas, many are realizing how unfair caps on damages are to victims of medical malpractice. The $250,000 cap on non-economic damage awards that Texas has imposed often leave victims who have suffered immense pain, disability and disfigurement without redress.

Due to an extremely effective PR campaign run by big insurance companies and big business, many citizens in states like Texas believe that lawsuits are to blame for doctors’ increased insurance costs. The reality is – insurance companies are to blame for increased malpractice insurance, as a recent study by the American Association for Justice reveals.

The Center for Justice and Democracy, advocates of the civil justice system, has published two helpful articles showing that caps do not decrease insurance premiums, and addressing several of the myths about medical malpractice cases that have inaccurately swayed public opinion for far too long.

Doctors are not getting relief from caps on lawsuits, victims of negligence are not being fairly compensated, and insurance companies are profiting. Insurance companies are the only winners in tort reform.

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Hayes Robinson wandered from Sacred Heart Hospital, in Chicago, IL, on Sunday and his family continues to look for him. Hayes is a 76-year old Alzheimer’s patient. According to the family, Mr. Robinson had tried to walk out of the hospital on a previous visit. Hayes is without his blood pressure and Alzheimer’s medications.

Hettie May Knox, Mr. Robinson’s companion, said the hospital staff told her, “he signed himself out about an hour ago.” The patient told the hospital staff that he lived just around the corner. However, Mr. Robinson did not live just around the corner, in fact he lived over four miles away!

Elderly patients with Alzheimer's disease should never be left unattended. The weather this week in Chicago is another concern for the victim's family. With extreme heat blanketing the city, Mr. Robinson stands a good chance of getting heat stroke. If you or anyone you know has any information on the whereabouts of Mr. Robinson please contact Area 5 SVU police at 312-746-8365.

Levin & Perconti successfully settled a case against Manorcare this summer for $825,000 when a severely demented patient wandered from the facility in January 2004 and died from overexposure to the sub-zero temperatures.

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Today, a federal scientist announced that diabetes drug Avandia should be pulled from the market. Avandia drug maker Glaxo Smith Kline of course disputes these recommendations.

The expert maintains that Avandia should be pulled from the market because of heart risks associated with consuming the drug and the drug’s lack of any unique short-term benefits in maintaining blood-sugar levels for diabetics.

The FDA is currently meeting to determine whether Avandia should be restricted or completely pulled from the market. The FDA was alerted to the dangers of Avandia by a New England Journal of Medicine study that showed a 43% higher risk of heart attack by those taking Avandia compared with patients taking alternative diabetes medication.

Patients who have endured heart attacks or heart problems and who have taken Avandia may be entitled to compensation for these injuries.

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To combat the recent spike in surgery fires, the American Society of Anesthesiologists plans to issue its first set of guidelines to prevent the once rare surgical injury. Although they may have several different causes, experts believe that many surgery fires occur when oxygen builds up under surgical drapes and is then ignited by the now frequent use of lasers and other tools that use electric current. One of the guidelines to be issued this fall will be to discontinue the anesthetist’s practice of giving a sedated patient 100% oxygen instead of only what the patient needs for respiration during surgery.

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Click here for a previous post on surgery fires

The UCI Medical Center will spend $7.5 million to settle 35 claims from patients who waited to receive livers from a facility that couldn’t provide the transplants. The UCI Medical Center frequently had to turn down livers that it was offered because it didn’t have the staff to perform the liver transplant procedures. In one case, a 65 year old man who died, even though he was in the hospital, ready for surgery, and had an organ specifically donated to him. Although the hospital records indicated that he was too sick to have the operation, the actual reason he did not receive the transplant was because there was no surgeon available to perform the procedure. When the liver transplant program was closed in 2005, the facility had not had a full-time liver surgeon on site for over a year.

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A recent survey by the non-profit RAND Corporation shows some alarming results. The study showed that the most significant impact of California's three decade-old $250,000 medical malpractice cap falls on the patients and families who are severely injured or killed as a result of medical negligence.
The full article may be found at the Center for Justice and Democracy's website.

In Tampa, Florida yesterday a jury awarded $21 million to a couple whose son was born with severe birth defects. The parents claimed that a doctor at the University of South Florida misdiagnosed a severe birth defect, Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, which is the inability to correctly produce or synthesize cholesterol. This misdiagnosis led the couple to have a second child with similar problems. The award of $21 million will be used to provide the constant care the now 2-year old child will need for the rest of his life as a result of his birth defect.

However, due to Florida’s $200,000 cap on lawsuits against government agencies, these parents may never be able to collect the award and provide the care their son needs. This is a classic example of how tort reform can arbitrarily and unfairly affect those severely injured by another’s negligence. A jury is often a representative group called upon to speak for the community. In this case, the jury determined that because of a doctor’s negligence, $21 million was an appropriate amount that would enable the couple to care for their severely handicapped child for the rest of his life. Instead, because the Florida legislature has imposed an arbitrary cap on these types of awards, the parents stand to receive only $200,000 – barely enough to care for the child for a year.

The attorney for the parents plans to petition the legislature to allow the award of damages.

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The families of three elderly women have ordered medical records from University of Chicago Hospitals, commonly the first step taken in filing a medical malpractice lawsuit. The two women who died and the woman that remains in a coma were all being cared for in the same wing. Their deaths and the coma may all be caused by insulin overdoses. One of the women, who entered the hospital with a urinary tract infection, showed that her insulin level was hundreds of times higher than normal at the time of death, while hospital records revealed that the woman was never officially given insulin. Another woman, who was suffering from pressure ulcers and wound infections, died after being admitted to the hospital. Police continue to investigate her case. The third woman was admitted for a brain aneurysm and now suffers from a brain injury and remains in a coma after displaying unusually high levels of insulin as well. Chicago police continue to investigate and the families move closer to filing suit.

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The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) have issued an alert regarding Propofol, and anesthetic commonly known as Diprivan. Several clusters of patients have reported experiencing chills, fever and body aches after being administered the drug. If you or someone you know has received Propofol for sedation of general anesthesia and subsequently experienced fever, chills, and body aches or other symptoms please make a report to the MedWatch program. Those patients should also be evaluated for bacterial sepsis. At this point, no product liability lawsuits have been filed.

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The Illinois Trial Lawyer's Association proposed and supported a house and senate bill in the Illinois legislature that would close loopholes and minimize retrieval costs of medical records, especially electronic records. SB 472 and HB 830 combined will limit copying fees for medical record companies and will require them to submit records in an electronic format whenever possible. With the introduction of the electronic format requirement, the medical record companies are now only allowed to charge 50% of the costs of paper records, plus postage costs and a processing fee. This new legislation helps cut costs for patients and victims of medical malpractice or personal injury, and saves time in the process.

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Two days after winning a personal injury lawsuit against the Illinois hospital whose medical malpractice caused her son brain damage, a registered nurse who worked in a facility owned by that hospital was suspended. Less than a year later, the nurse was terminated under conditions which would make it nearly impossible for her to find other work as a nurse. The lawsuit alleges that the hospital terminated the nurse in retaliation so that other nurses and employees would be deterred from trying to sue the hospital in the future.

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A personal injury lawsuit has been filed against an Illinois pharmacy because it gave a concentrated dose of phenobarbital to a child. The child's prescription called for 16.2mg tablets, but she was instead given 60mg tablets. When she arrived at St. Louis Children's Hospital less than two weeks later, the child's injuries included phenobarbital overdose, hypercapnia, acidosis, altered mental state and right lung collapse.

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Wal-Mart announced that it has recently settled a wrongful death lawsuit involving a store whose pharmacist inadvertently gave a concentrated dose of insulin. The man went to the store for over-the-counter insulin, Humulin R (u-100). Instead, he was given prescription strength Humulin R (u-500), which is five times stronger. After injecting the prescription strength insulin, the man lapsed into a diabetic coma and died two weeks later. The details of the wrongful death settlement have not been disclosed.

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An Indiana man is filing a medical malpractice suit in response to personal injuries sustained when his face was burned during a flash oxygen fire that broke during what should have been a routine surgery to remove cysts and a mole. Oxygen was sparked during cauterization of the removed cysts, leading to second and third degree burns over the man's hair, skin, and eyes. Astonishingly, after the man's face caught fire, the MultiCare Physician Center in Merrilville, Indiana decided not to immediately tell man's awaiting family what happened. Instead, they told his family to go to lunch.

After he was stabilized, the man was transferred to a Valparaiso eye doctor to have his vision checked. From there, he was sent to Saint Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point. There, doctors determined that the burns to the man's face were so severe that he needed to be admitted to the University of Chicago Hospital burn unit, where the man spent the next eleven days. There, the man received painful hydrotherapy and skin grafts. Still, the man will need additional surgery for his personal injuries.

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In a decision published late last week, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a million dollar wrongful death verdict for the Illinois plaintiff in the case of Fagocki v. Algonquin / Lake-in-the-Hills Fire Protection District. On appeal from the federal district court of the Northern District of Illinois, the defendant emergency medical services provider successfully argued that it could not be held liable for any medical malpractice that led to the death of Shirley Johnson. The Illinois Emergency Medical Services System Act provides immunity to licensed emergency medical service providers for ordinary negligence. Instead, emergency medical service providers are only liable for their errors if they satisfy a "willful and wanton" standard. The purpose of the Act is to encourage licensed medical professionals to provide the emergency medical care that they might otherwise be deterred from providing if they were liable for ordinary negligence.

At issue on appeal was whether the emergency medical service provider's failure to correctly intubate the 50 year old patient was willful and wanton. Shirley Johnson was 50 years old and overweight when she ate peanuts, a food she was allergic to, at a Chinese restaurant in Illinois. Because of various failures to begin intubation, which were then followed by unsuccessful attempts to intubate, Ms. Johnson suffered brain damage that put her in a vegetative state for the two and a half years before her subsequent death. Despite the jury's verdict in favor of the plaintiff, the Seventh Circuit reversed and held that the failure to correctly intubate, given the conditions and difficulties of Shirley Johnson's specific case, did not amount to willful and wanton behavior. As a result, Shirley Johnsons' family will not be entitled to any damage award, and it is unlikely that her husband will be able to pay the substantial and overwhelming medical bills accrued over the years which she was in a coma and hospitalized.

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For the first time, information regarding the success rates of individual cardiac surgeons on coronary bypass procedures has been released in California. The state has released reports on cardiac bypass death rates at specific hospitals, but this is the first time that individual surgeons have been listed. 95 percent of heart surgeons were in line with the expected mortality average of just over 3 percent. The surgeons that ranked worse explained their rating as the result of taking on older and sicker patients; some of these surgeons are now saying they will avoid the sickest patients to avoid such rankings. Public policy analysts say that patient mix shouldn't affect a surgeons overall scores, if risk adjustments are done properly. Failure to adequately adjust to these risks could result in an instance of medical malpractice, not just a bad listing.

Unsurprisingly, the American Hospital Association has taken a stance opposite that of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding a payment issue. The center has proposed a plan to stop paying hospitals for conditions that are preventable yet still acquired during hospital stays.

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Patient safety advocates claim that hospitals in this country have little financial incentive to prevent complications because they stand to make more money for treating the conditions patients acquire during their stays. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services new rule aims to change this injustice.

The six hospital acquired conditions are preventable if the hospital staff follows common policies and procedures. Objects left behind in surgical patients, along with pressure ulcers are two of the six preventable hospital acquired conditions. The implementation of this rule in October of 2008 will force hospitals to pay for their own negligence.

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A recent survey of physicians at the Stroger Hospital in Chicago, Illinois has revealed overwhelming dissatisfaction with the hospital, leading to low morale and an exodus of doctors. Doctors cited a lack of funding for their low morale, as budget crunches have led to layoffs and have created a scarcity of resources. As a result, many of the doctors are leaving the hospital or are making plans to do so. Only one third of the physicians polled stated that they planned to stay. The survey also revealed that the conditions of Stroger Hospital prevented them from delivering a quality of care that they would consider excellent or very good. In response, the county administrators plan to do a better job of informing the physicians of the positive changes taking place at the hospital.

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A recent report regarding medical malpractice in Pennsylvania, focusing on surgical errors, was recently released by the Patient Safety Authority. 175 errors were made in the state during the past two and a half years, not including 253 close calls. These errors can lead to serious physical and financial strain, or even wrongful death. "Wrong-site" surgeries are a persistent problem and are clearly avoidable. Pennsylvania is a leader in public accountability for medical and surgical errors. In an effort to reduce the costs of health care, the Governor proposed that the state should cease to pay for care involving hospital-acquired infections, wrong-site surgeries, and other instances of medical malpractice. It is also the only state that requires hospitals to report near-misses.

The report cited wrong-site surgeries including the removal of a patient's healthy thyroid and incorrect cancer diagnosis as the result of a laboratory mix-up, an incorrect incision on the wrong side of a brain injury patient's head, and a surgeon inserting a needle into a patient's right knee when the surgery was planned for the other leg. In 83 reported cases of wrong-site surgeries in the state, the procedure was completed before the mistake was detected.

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A medical malpractice lawsuit has been filed against an Illinois doctor in the wrongful death of a 16 year old patient due to a failure to diagnose meningitis. The teen was first seen by the doctor when the teen came to the emergency room complaining of migraines. Sent home with pain killers, the teen continued to suffer severe headaches two days later. In addition, the teen also suffered from fever and and a decreased appetite. After blood tests and CT, the teen was admitted with a diagnosis of sinusitis. At that point, the teen began to experience stiffness in his neck, in addition to his previous symptoms of severe headache, fever, and a decreased appetite.

Four days after his first visit to the emergency room, a different doctor examined the teen and had him immediately transferred to a different hospital. One day later, the teen died of acute bacterial meningitis and related periventriculitis.

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In O'Casek v. Children's Home and Aid Soc. of Ill., the Fourth District of the Appellate Court of Illinois has recently reversed its precedent in Cargill, adding another twist in section 2-622 interpretation. In its decision, the court relied upon the 2005 amendments to the statute. There, the legislature explicitly rejected the controversial portions of the 1995 and 1998 amendments. As a result, the plaintiff who had previously voluntarily withdrawn a medical malpractice claim could later refile with a 90-day affidavit.

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Recent studies suggest that patients and their families are being denied access to medical records too frequently due to an overzealous application of a federal law called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA was designed to allow people to take their health insurance with them when they changed jobs, but it also set out rules on when a health care provider could or could not disclose medical information. Experts say that health care providers either do not understand the hyper-technical law or have been trained to apply it whenever there is any doubt about what constitutes protected information or whether a disclosure would be permissible.

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Governor Spitzer recently announced that he approved a 14% increase on medical malpractice insurance within his state. At the same time, the governor also commissioned a task force to examine the state of medicine and malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance providers argue that they need to increase premiums in response to medical malpractice litigation. They further argue that, without the insurance premium increases, they would be forced to leave the state and discontinue writing policies. Doctors, at the same time, argue that the increase in premiums may force doctors leave the state and may discourage young people from taking up the practice of medicine. However, the doctors do not point to any statistics that show that doctors actually have been leaving the state or that patients have been unable to attain the health care that they require. Similarly, the insurance providers do not point to any specific figures that would support the otherwise counterintuitive assertion that a large insurance company is having a hard time making a profit. Hopefully, these are some of the claims that the Governor's task force will investigate.

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A medical malpractice lawsuit was settled for $7 million last year on behalf of a patient whose doctors negligently failed to prevent a fire from igniting in his throat. Otolarynologist Dr. Joost Knops and anesthesiologist Dr. Kenneth Kloehn failed to take necessary precautions to prevent the fire, which ignited when a laser used to remove vocal cord lesions interacted with an oxygen leak from a medical device. The doctors failed to replace the device allowing the flammable cotton in the the patient's throat to catch fire. As a result, the patient is permanently unable to speak above a whisper. The doctors have been called before a state medical board to respond to allegations of unprofessional conduct.