Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

The family of a woman who died as a result of medical malpractice was recently awarded $5,200,000 by a Cook County, Illinois jury. The woman, who was treated at Palos Community Hospital for stomach pain, was diagnosed with a colon infection (diverticulitis) among other problems. The woman was treated by removal of a portion of her colon and a primary anastomosis. Neglecting standard procedure, the doctor failed to perform a colostomy. When the patient returned to the hospital shortly after, the staples used in the anastomosis had come undone. At that point, the doctor performed the colostomy but it was too late. The woman ultimately died.

The Illinois Supreme Court has recently approved local rules that would require mediation for medical malpractice claims in Madison County. The rules also require that mediation occur within 90 days after all depositions in a case were taken. In addition, the Madison County rules enable the creation of a Circuit Review panel, composed of local judges, who must approve the medical malpractice claim before it can go to mediation. Finally, the rules also set out strict limits on 2-622 affidavits. If a medical malpractice claim does not have the required health professional’s report indicating that the claim is legitimate, the plaintiff has 45 days to obtain one or else forfeit the case.

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A man has filed a wrongful death suit against the hospital that he alleges provided negligent custodial care to his wife. The man’s lawsuit is intentionally alleged as a negligence claim because of Wisconsin’s recent tort reform. If the case is considered a medical malpractice claim, then it would be subject to that state's recovery limits and mandatory mediation. If the case is allowed to be pursued as a negligence claim, then recovery will be determined by the amount that a jury decides is adequate to compensate the man for his losses. The man’s wife was a patient in the hospital's locked behavioral health unit. The day before her death, she was permitted to leave on a five-hour pass. When she returned, the hospital failed to perform a search of the woman. If they had, they would have found the handgun and ammunition that the woman later used to kill herself.

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Illinois Senators Obama and Durbin believe that that conduct of a Southern Illinois VA hospital has been "extremely distressing." In July 2006, Jose Veizaga-Mendez had to surrender his license to practice medicine in the state of Massachusetts. A state regulatory board had investigated Veizaga-Mendez and found that he had provided unacceptable care to seven patients. Then, Veizaga-Mendez made his way to Illinois and was hired as a surgeon by a VA hospital in Southern Illinois. At that point, the VA hospital experienced a sudden increase in post-surgical deaths. Although Veizaga-Mendez has since resigned, Senators Obama and Durbin have written a letter to the VA Secretary, James Nicholson, demanding answers on how this man was hired.

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A woman recently filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against her gynecologist. The complaint alleges that her gynecologist accidentally cut open a tumor he removed from her ovary and never informed her of his surgical error. The tumor the doctor cut enabled cancer cells to spread into her abdomen. Although the tumor was removed in 2002, the woman only found out last year by a doctor at Mayo Clinic that the gynecologist had accidentally cut into her tumor and caused the spreading of the cancer. The Mayo Clinic doctor told her that he learned it from her medical files.

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A dentist is under a criminal investigation for alleged sexual battery against numerous female patients. Now, a medical malpractice lawsuit has also been filed against him. The doctor is alleged to have inappropriately touched the patient.

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The Paris Regional Medical Center, a Paris, Texas hospital owned by Essent Healthcare, Inc., has filed a defamation lawsuit against a blogger who has been critical of the medical care that the Paris Regional Medical Center has provided. At this stage in the litigation, the Paris Regional Medical Center’s main goal has been to unmask the identity of the anonymous blogger. After that, the Paris Regional Medical Center hopes to shut down the web site and curb the criticism that the blog, the-paris-site, has generated against the Paris Regional Medical Center.

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Continue reading "Hospital tries to silence critical blogger" »

The widower of Arlene Miller would like to file a wrongful death and medical malpractice claim for what happened to his wife, but he cannot find a lawyer who will take his case. Although he has collected all of his wife’s medical records and has done considerable research himself, but he has been told that it simply isn’t “economically feasible to pursue” the claim. In 2003, Texas legislators reformed state laws and capped non-economic damages for malpractice suits at $250,000. Jay Harvey, president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, says that, because of the high costs of litigation, this recovery cap tends denies justice to the very old and the very young and simply does not make sense. “It’s the only area of law that we have an arbitrary cap for fair compensation. It shows a lack of trust in the jury system. We will trust a jury to decide if someone will die from lethal injection, but not grant fair compensation.”

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Continue reading "Tort recovery limits deny justice to former Ms. Comiskey Park" »

A transplant surgeon is facing charges in connection with the death of a California man in a severe case of medical malpractice. The doctor is accused of administering a harmful substance to the victim, adult abuse, and unlawful controlled substance prescription. The victim’s mother has filed a wrongful death lawsuit and a medical malpractice lawsuit.

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A jury recently awarded $75,000 in damages to a woman who alleged in a lawsuit that a podiatrist improperly performed an unnecessary surgery on her foot. The victim filed the medical malpractice lawsuit against the podiatrist in April 1998. The surgery resulted in scar tissue that continues to cause her pain and discomfort.

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The American Cancer Society has recently produced an ad campaign stressing the need of adequate quality health care for Americans in order to lower cancer death rates. Among the poorly insured and uninsured, cancer is most often detected at an advanced stage, too frequently proving fatal. The American Cancer Society's goals of reducing cancer death and incidence rates by 2015, beginning in 1990, will not be met unless access to screening and treatment becomes available to all patients. The society's chief executive stated that, "lack of access will be a bigger cancer killer than tobacco," unless the health care system is amended. The delay in diagnosing poorly or uninsured patients causes them to bear the costs of more expensive and difficult treatments. Within families afflicted with cancer, one in four will use most or all of their savings, including one in five insured families, to fight the disease. 47 million Americans do not have health insurance, and millions more only have limited coverage. Access to health care for all Americans will lower cancer death rates, among innumerable other health ailments.

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1. Don’t be afraid to intervene
2. Ask questions until you understand the answer
3. Remember that you know things the doctors don’t
4. Temper your loved one’s enthusiasm for quick fixes
5. Scope out the nurses

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The mother of the son who suffered serious brain damage after child birth spoke recently after a jury awarded her family $13.5 million in a birth injury medical malpractice lawsuit. The mother had done some research and found out the treatment for cerebral palsy for her son is expensive. If the family receives the $13.5 million that the jury awarded, they will be able to afford the treatment. The medical center is appealing and it will probably be another two years before the family receives any money. The mother thanked the jury and said “They changed my son’s life for the best, and I will never forget them for it – never.”

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After a 15-1 vote, an FDA advisory committee composed of experts in the field has recommended that sales of the blood loss prevention drug be permitted to continue. The drug, sold by Bayer AG under the name Trasylol, was initially approved by the FDA in 1993 to prevent the need for blood transfusions during bypass surgeries. The safety of the drug recently came into question when two studies released in 2006 linked the pharmaceutical to kidney problems, heart attacks, strokes, and even an increased risk of death. Although the committee recommended keeping the drug on the market, it did state that the concerns over the drug’s safety warranted further research.

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A State Supreme Court held yesterday that there is no duty requiring a physician to inform a pregnant patient that an embryo is an existing, living human being and that an abortion results in the killing of a family member. A woman had filed a medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit against her doctor after she received an abortion in 1996. The woman claimed that, prior to signing the consent form, she and her husband were not given material medical information that they needed to make the decision. Specifically, the woman alleged medical malpractice when the doctor failed to inform her of “‘the scientific and medical fact that [her six- to eight-week-old embryo] was a complete, separate, unique and irreplaceable human being’ and that an abortion would result in ‘killing an existing human being.’” Lawsuits pending in Illinois and other states have raised similar issues.

Click here for the New Jersey Supreme Court opinion
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Continue reading "State High Court rules on informed consent abortion case" »

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has confirmed and corroborated the results of an earlier study that first connected Avandia to an increased risk of heart attack. This new study used a different methodology than the earlier study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and it reached the same conclusion – a patient’s risk of heart attack increases by over forty percent when taking the diabetes medication, Avandia. This statistic is further exacerbated by the fact that diabetes sufferers are already at a higher risk of heart attack. In fact, the leading cause of death for diabetes sufferers is heart attack. It is this heightened risk to heart attack that has the researchers behind the new study to state that the FDA should reconsider its latest decision to keep the drug on the market.

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The Illinois legislature has passed, and the governor has signed, legislation requiring the screening of hospital patients for drug-resistant staph infections. The MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) infections infect over a million patients and kill tens of thousands every year. MRSA is the most common infection acquired in hospitals and Illinois is leading the nation in confronting the controversial issue. The law becomes effective immediately. Hospitals are now required to test all patients in intensive care units for MRSA and isolate patients with the bacteria. The bill was controversial because some hospital infection control practitioners claimed it would hinder response times to emergency threats. The same group introduced legislation requiring hospitals to prevent the spread of infection by analyzing which infections posed the most risks at different facilities. Although this bill was intended to replace the MRSA bill, both were passed into law. Fortunately for patients, the bills are aimed at protecting patients from unnecessarily contracting dangerous infections in hospitals.

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On Sept. 14, 2007 Inside Edition will air a segment on surgical fires, a form of medical malpractice and the subject of recent medical malpractice lawsuits. Inside Edition is a syndicated national program that airs on different channels and at different times of the day. The program will air in Chicago on ABC at 3pm.

Click here for a listing of where to watch in your locality
Click here for prior posts on surgical fires

Access to quality health care is urged by the American Cancer Society for all Americans. When cancer diagnosis or treatment is delayed, it can be fatal. This is felt even more so among the uninsured or under insured, whose life savings can be wiped out treating cancer.

According to the New York Times, 47 million Americans are without health insurance with millions more having only minimal or poor insurance. The American Cancer Society’s alert stems from the statistic that those suffering from breast, larynx and mouth cancers who are uninsured are more likely than the insured to have these cancers diagnosed at a late stage.

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A medical malpractice lawsuit involving a botched delivery resulting in brain damage to the newborn has been brought in front of a Cook County, Illinois judge. This lawsuit is significant in the state of Illinois. The baby's attorney is claiming that the caps placed on medical malpractice lawsuits for pain and suffering ($500,000 for doctors, $1,000,000 for hospitals) are not sufficient in a case such as this one. The law imposing caps on pain and suffering awards was signed into law two years ago. The law was in response to increasing medical malpractice insurance rates for doctors. Although the solution was based on the caps, insurance rates have been stabilizing or falling even though most cases affected by the law have not yet reached a verdict or settlement. This case will face a long appeals process regardless of the ruling in the Cook County court. The baby's lawyers will aim to prove the unconstitutionality of this law by proving that in an instance like this, when a child is unnecessarily and permanently brain damaged due to a preventable medical mistake, the caps do not offer fair compensation.

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The search for the solution to reaching a better balance between cost and quality of doctors and hospitals has reached an important turning point. A recent court ruling opens consumer access to specific data from the Medicare claims database of doctors. A consumer group sued the Health and Human Services Department asking for the disclosure of this information involving about 40 million patients (who will not be disclosed) and over 700,000 doctors. An appeal of this ruling seems unlikely as one of the Bush administration's initiatives is to improve price and quality transparency of medical providers. Furthermore, support to open the Medicare database for public access is rising in the Senate. This ruling will allow patients to see how many of a certain type of procedure a doctor has performed successfully and if the tests ordered by doctors are necessary, which will help to reduce the cost of treatment.

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A jury returned a $13.5 million medical malpractice lawsuit verdict last week against a medical center in a case involving a birth injury where the newborn boy suffered serious brain damage. The doctors mishandled the birth and caused cerebral palsy and other problems. The son, age 4 now, still cannot walk, use his arms, or speak. He appears to have normal intelligence and the family hopes he can learn to communicate via a special computer.

For the full article.

Finally, the health industry is starting to admit their errors in cases of clear medical malpractice, offering fair compensation to victims at the outset. The results have shown that honesty is the best policy. Honest at the outset has resulted in fewer medical malpractice lawsuits and the recovery of more compensation to the injured patient without legal expenses and expert fees.

For the full article.

A 40 year-old woman filed a medical malpractice lawsuit last month after suffering excruciating pain and seizures and having to undergo an emergency hysterectomy after a botched abortion. The medical malpractice lawsuit alleges that the abortion providers were negligent in their care of the 40 year-old woman. The lawsuit also charges the employees with battery because the doctors continued performing the abortion even after the patient asked them to stop.

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Choosing a doctor for LASIK eye surgery is often the most difficult part of the process. A skilled and experienced doctor who uses the best technology and procedures is the best choice. Most importantly, make sure your surgeon uses a laser that has been approved by the FDA. A recent article addressed questions to ask your surgeon before surgery in order to protect yourself, including some of the following:

1. When did you start performing LASIK surgery?
2. How many surgeries have you performed in the last 12 months?
3. Have any of your LASIK patients ever filed a medical malpractice lawsuit after surgery due to surgical error?
4. What type of corrective laser do you use? Is it FDA approved?

For the full article and more questions.

Misdiagnosis of a brain tumor can lead to wrong treatment. Because diagnosis depends largely on a pathologist’s reading of a slide, medical malpractice may happen. Experts state that brain tumors are sometimes diagnosed when they are not tumors at all.

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