News Archive

Medical Malpractice News

Doctor to be Tried for Failing to Report Abuse
The trial of a pediatrician charged with failing to report suspicions of child abuse in the death of a 6-month-old will begin soon. The baby's parents have been charged with homicide in her death, but the doctor, who allegedly examined the baby and noted bruises and bite marks, did not report suspicions of abuse to the state and is being charged with neglect. State law requires professionals, including doctors, to report suspected child abuse. 

UPMC Alters Safety System in Wake of Death on Roof
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center executives announced a system-wide safety reform spurred by the case of a dementia patient who wandered away from her room and was found dead 14 hours later on the hospital rooftop. The new system, called "Condition L," will improve hospital searches the way Amber Alerts have in cases of missing children. UPMC revamped its search policies after the death of a patient, who walked away from her room on the 12th floor at 5:00 pm and was found on the roof of the hospital at 8:00 am the next day. The patient was found in her hospital gown and slippers after a night in which temperatures fell to the 20s. UPMC employees insist that they checked her room two other times during their search but found no sign of her. They claim she may have wandered through other parts of the hospital before going outside.  

No More Goodies for Doctors from Drug Makers
Starting January 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on branded goodies, such as Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers and Lipitor mugs, that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs. Some skeptics deride the voluntary ban as a superficial measure that does nothing to curb the far larger amounts drug companies spend each year on various other efforts to influence physicians. But proponents welcome it as a step toward ending the barrage of drug brands and logos that surround, and may subliminally influence, doctors and patients.  

Child Psychiatrist to Curtail Industry-Financed Activities
A prominent Harvard child psychiatrist will curtail activities financed by the drug industry while Massachusetts General Hospital investigates his failure for years to disclose the consulting fees he received from drug makers. The psychiatrist, a world-renowned and controversial researcher on childhood mental illness, has agreed to stop participating in speaking engagements and other activities paid for by pharmaceutical companies. A Congressional investigation found that the psychiatrist had been paid at least $1.6 million in consulting fees by drug makers from 2000 to 2007, but had failed to report much of this income to Harvard officials for several years. 

State Renews License of Doctor Sued 26 Times
The Pennsylvania Board of Medicine has renewed the license of a Lancaster doctor who has been sued 26 times for medical malpractice. Though the orthopedist no longer has operating privileges at any hospital, the state has renewed his license through 2010. The doctor is currently on "indefinite administrative medical leave" from his practice. Of the 26 medical malpractice claims filed against him since 2002, four have been settled by payments to patients who sued the doctor following operations on their knees or hips. Another 10 of the 26 cases have been discontinued by the plaintiffs or dismissed by the court. The other 12 cases are moving forward, but have yet to go to trial. No other doctor in Lancaster has been sued more than three times.

California Teen's Family Sues Cigna Over Transplant
The family of a 17-year-old leukemia patient has sued health insurance giant Cigna Corp. for her death in 2007 after the company initially refused to pay for a liver transplant. The lawsuit alleges breach of contract, unfair business practices and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit accuses Cigna of delaying and rejecting valid claims, which resulted in the wrongful death of their daughter. The insurer eventually approved the transplant, but only after the girl's family held a rally outside the company's offices. The teenager, however, died hours after the approval was secured. 

Doctor Cleared of Harming Man to Obtain Organs
A California transplant surgeon was acquitted of a charge that he had intentionally harmed a donor to speed extraction of the patient's kidney and liver. The verdict closed a case that had drawn widespread attention to the medical and ethical complexities of organ transplant. The surgeon was found not guilty of a single felony charge of abuse of a dependent adult after two other felony charges, which included administering harmful substances and unlawful prescription, were dropped. Prosecutors had argued that the doctor prescribed an excessive amount of drugs during a failed harvesting procedure on a brain-damaged donor. The doctor countered that he had been trying to ease the patient's suffering after other doctors failed to perform their duties. 

Hospital May Face Lawsuit Over Woman's Death
The family of the 89-year-old woman who died on the roof of a Pittsburgh hospital has asked Common Please Court to give it access to reports from authorities regarding the woman's death. A writ of summons would allow the family to gather information to prepare a wrongful death lawsuit. The family is currently seeking subpoena power for investigative reports on the death prepared by the Allegheny County medical examiner, the district attorney's office, Pittsburgh police and the Department of Health. The woman, who suffered from dementia and heart problems and had a history of wandering, left her room through a fire exit. Her body was found the next morning by a maintenance worker with injures that suggested a fall. She was wearing only a hospital gown.

New Rules for Health Providers Stirs Objections
The Bush administration, in its final days, issued a federal rule reinforcing protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions and other procedures because of religious or moral objections. Critics of the rule say the protections are so broad they limit a patient's right to get care and accurate information. For example, they fear the rule could make it possible for a pharmacy clerk to refuse to sell birth control pills or AIDS medication and face no ramifications from an employer. Under long-standing federal law, institutions may not discriminate against individuals who refuse to perform abortions or provide a referral for one. The administration's rule is intended to ensure that federal funds don't flow to providers who violate those laws.  

Dennis Quaid and Wife Settle with Hospital
Documents show Dennis Quaid and his wife have agreed to a $750,000 settlement with a hospital that gave his newborn twins an overdose of a blood thinner. Though agreeing to settle, the hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, is not admitting any wrongdoing. The Quaids have also sued drug maker Baxter Healthcare Corp. over the drug's packaging.  

Colonoscopies Miss Many Cancers, Study Finds
For years, many doctors and patients thought colonoscopies, the popular screening test for colorectal cancer, were all but infallible. However, researchers have reported that the test may miss a type of polyp, a flat lesion or an indented one that nestles against the colon wall. The study found that colonoscopies missed just about every cancer in the right side of the colon, where cancers are harder to detect but about 40 percent arise. And it also missed roughly a third of cancers in the left side of the colon. Instead of preventing 90 percent of cancers, as some doctors have told patients, colonoscopies might actually prevent more like 60 percent to 70 percent. 

Many Doctors Still Using Bare-Bones Records Systems
Just under 40 percent of U.S. doctors use electronic medical records and many say the system they use is only minimally functional, according to federal survey results. Only 4 percent of the 2,000 doctors surveyed by the National Center for Health Statistics said they systems were fully functional, a clear indication of just how many U.S. physicians rely on outdated paper records. The survey results are disturbing, considering experts unanimously agree that medical records should be used across the board to improve health care, prevent error and save costs. 

Doctors Call Emergency Care National Disgrace
The nation's emergency care system is "a ticking time bomb," with demand far outstripping the capacity of hospital emergency departments already crippled by a widespread shortage of doctors and nurses. The annual report card by the American College of Emergency Physicians gave the nation a D- grade for Americans' access to emergency care, saying the emergency care system was "fraught with significant challenges and under more stress than ever before." The report found that factors contributing to the crisis included a shortage of staff, hospital crowding, rising medical malpractice claims and a chronic lack of state-level programs to address preventable illnesses.  

Medical Malpractice Case Includes Rare Punitive Damages Claim
A Florida man who is suing two doctors for malpractice in a rare case allowing a punitive damages claim contends one of his surgeons left him on the table unconscious to be mutilated by the other doctor. The man, a former lawyer, claims his plastic surgeon later lied about his detached role in the botched surgery, creating two sets of medical records to hide the truth and still billed his insurance company for performing the surgery. The lawyers is suing because after an operation to remove small growths under his enlarged breasts ended with the complete removal of both breasts, leaving the man's chest disfigured.  

Does Memory Screening Help Spot Dementia or Harm?
There's no mammogram or Pap smear for Alzheimer's disease, yet an Alzheimer's group had begun a push for simply memory screenings in a bid to catch possible warning signs of dementia sooner. Memory screenings, which are five-minute mini-tests, are hugely controversial. Failing a test doesn't mean someone has dementia, but signals there might be a problem with short-term memory that should be checked by a doctor. Many still have ethical questions, though: Would memory screening target just people worried about existing problems or those at risk of future memory loss because of older age, family history or other factors? People who fail the test may assume that they are destined to have Alzheimer's, drastically changing their life after a five-minute test.  

Hospitals Face a New Epidemic: Bedsores
The number of hospital patients with bedsores has risen dramatically over a 14-year period, leading to longer, more expensive hospital stays. Some 503,300 patients admitted to U.S. hospitals in 2006 suffered from a bedsore that developed either before or during their stay. That figure is an increase from 281,300 in 1993, or 78.9 percent. By contrast, overall hospital admissions increased by just 15 percent between 1993 and 2006. Most of the patients who had bedsores were ages 65 and older.

The Pain May Be Real, But the Scan is Deceiving
Scans, more sensitive and easily available than ever, are increasingly finding abnormalities that may not be the cause of the problem for which they are blamed. It's an issue particularly for the millions of people who go to doctors' offices in pain. In what is often an irresistible feedback loop, patients who are in pain often demand scans hoping to find out what's wrong, doctors are tempted to offer scans to those patients, and then, once a scan is done, it is common for doctors and patients to assume that any abnormalities found are the reason for the pain. But in many cases it is just not known whether what is seen on a scan is the cause of the pain. The problem is that all too often, no one knows what is normal. 

Weak Oversight Lets Bad Hospitals Stay Open
Unlike some other nations, including France, the United States has no federal agency charged with hospital oversight. Instead, it relies on a patchwork of state health departments and a nonprofit group called the Joint Commission that sets basic quality standards for the nation. Hospitals are rarely closed or hit with significant financial penalties for hurting patients. One of the reasons is that even troubled hospitals are major employers, and communities generally rally behind them when they face the threat of cuts. 

Death on Roof Prompts Hospital Probes
The death of an 89-year-old woman on the roof of a Pittsburgh hospital is prompting several investigations, and the hospital could face fines, a change in its accreditation status and a lawsuit from the woman's family. Pittsburgh police, the state Health Department and the hospital itself will examine how the woman, who suffered from dementia and heart problems, was able to wander unnoticed from her room on the 12th floor to the roof. Her body was found there by a maintenance worker the next morning. She was wearing only a hospital gown and slippers in overnight temperatures that dipped to 23 degrees.

Penn Medicine to Disclose Doctors' Drug Ties
Patients at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine may soon be able to learn whether their doctors are paid on the side by pharmaceutical firms or medical-implant makers. Next year, the hospital will launch a web site that will contain searchable information on all outside activities of its doctors and scientists. Public disclosure of the times between its medical staff and industry would put Penn at the forefront of an emerging trend in response to growing concerns about medical conflicts of interest.  

Ignored LA Patient Could Have Been Saved
A homeless woman who died after writhing in pain on a hospital floor for nearly an hour could have survived is she had received proper treatment, a county report conceded. The report said that the woman could have been saved, at least in the early part of her detention at the hospital. The report also said that "this is a case of medical negligence as to the medical treatment provided by medical staff at the facility." The report calls on the county to settle a $45 million lawsuit filed by the woman's adult children for $250,000, the same amount offered by the county to the woman's boyfriend.  

Does Sleep Make for Better Doctors?
A national panel of health care experts recently released a report affirming the current mandate that limits the workweek for medical residents to 80 hours and offering additional recommendations to decrease fatigue for doctors-in-training. The report encourages graduate medical education programs to embrace a new culture of training, one that emphasizes patient safety and the importance of sleep. 

New Doctors Still Too Tired for Safety
A new U.S. report finds that doctors-in-training are still too exhausted and recommends that hospitals let them have a nap. Regulations that capped the working hours of bleary-eyed young doctors came just five years ago, limiting them to about 80 hours a week. However, a panel recommended easing the workload a bit more: Anyone working the maximum 30-hour shift should get an uninterrupted five-hour break for sleep after 16 hours. The argument is that sleep deprivation can fog the brain and lead to serious medical mistakes. As an illustration of the fatigue residents may experience, the panel noted that researchers have shown that overworked doctors have an increased risk of being involved in traffic accidents or falling asleep at the wheel after an extended-duty shift.  

Hospitals' Preventive Teams Don't Save Lives
Special teams set up to spot patients at risk of having cardiac or respiratory arrests in U.S. hospitals do not save lives and may not be a good use of resources, researchers have found. The teams are not "crash" teams that swoop in to revive patients, but rather experts in identifying people likely to suffer often-fatal cardiac or respiratory arrests, to save both lives and costs. Researchers studied whether such rapid response teams helped reduce hospital-wide incidents of cardiopulmonary arrest and death rates. They found that while the programs are not harming people, there was no clear additional benefit either.  

Nurse Faces Trial in Death of 11-Year-Old Boy
A licensed practical nurse will stand trial on the charge she administered a lethal dose of morphine to an 11-year-old boy. Prosecutors allege that the nurse gave the boy the morphine even though he wasn't prescribed the drug. The nurse had access to morphine because she was caring for other patients who required it around the time of the boy's death. The nurse cared for the boy, who had cerebral palsy, as his parents and brothers slept upstairs in their home on the night of his death. Between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., the boy was given a dose of morphine that rendered him lethargic before killing him. The parents have testified that they didn't awaken until the morning, when the nurse informed them that the boy was unresponsive.  

Arrogant, Abusive and Disruptive Doctors
Surveys of hospital staff members, who blame badly behaved doctors for low morale, stress and high turnover, suggest that such behavior contributes to medical mistakes, preventable complications and even death. A survey of health care workers at 102 nonprofit hospitals from 2004 to 2007 found that 67 percent of respondents said they thought there was a link between disruptive behavior and medical mistakes, and 18 percent said they knew of a mistake that occurred because of an obnoxious doctor. Another survey found that 40 percent of hospital staff members reported having been so intimidated by a doctor that they did not share their concerns about orders of medication that appeared to be incorrect. As a result, 7 percent said they contributed to a medication error. 

Cardiologists Debate Expensive Heart Scans
Cardiologists have opened another front in the rancorous debate over expensive medical technologies, questioning the conclusions of a new study finding that high-resolution computer scans of the heart are almost as effective as conventional angiograms. The debate reveals a deep rift among heart specialists over the use of 64-slice or CT angiography, which produces 3-D images of the heart and blood vessels. CT scans are faster and less invasive than conventional angiograms, but they expose patients to higher doses of radiation, which may increase the risk of cancer. Angiograms, on the other hand, require insertion of a catheter through a blood vessel in the groin, a longer procedure that carries a risk of more immediate complications.  

Delay in Cancer Treatment Found to Raise Recurrence
One in five breast cancer patients ages 65 and older postponed radiation therapy or did not complete the full radiation regimen after breast-conserving surgery, and the lapses in care took a significant toll on their health, a new study reports. Researchers reviewed the medical records of nearly 8,000 patients with Stage 1 breast cancer. Those who waited eight weeks before beginning radiation therapy were 1.4 times as likely to have had a recurrence or to develop a new breast tumor, the researchers found. Patients who delayed radiation for 12 weeks or longer were four times as likely to have suffered a recurrence.   

Kentucky Widow Settles Lawsuit Against VA for $975,000
A widow whose husband died at a Veterans Affairs hospital under fire for substandard care has agreed to settle her lawsuit against the government for $975,000. The widow brought a $12 million federal wrongful death lawsuit after her husband bled to death after undergoing gallbladder surgery at a VA hospital in Illinois. Soon after the man's death, at least nine other deaths at the hospital between October 2006 and March 2007 were deemed "directly attributable" to substandard care at the hospital. 

Vegas Doctor Convicted of Using Botox Knockoff
A doctor and his wife have been convicted of treating patients with a Botox knockoff at their Las Vegas clinic. Jurors returned the verdict with convictions on mail fraud and adulterating a drug while held for sale. Prosecutors claimed that patients thought they were getting Botox treatments to reduce facial wrinkles but got the cheaper TRItox instead. TRItox has yet to be cleared for human use and is only used in research. 

Organ Policy Leaves Some with Subpar Livers
An organ allocation policy that puts the sickest patients first in line to receive available donor livers for transplantation has created some unintended consequences for those patients low on the organ waiting list. Since the new donor organ allocation system was implemented in early 2002, there has been a shift toward using poorer quality organs in patients least in need of a transplant. This has reduced post-transplant survival in recent years among these patients. A recent study found that the overall quality of transplanted livers has gotten worse since implementation of the system. 

Jury Awards $20.5 Million in Medical Malpractice Case
A Lackawanna County jury awarded a family $20.5 million in a medical malpractice suit that followed a boy's lasting medical problems caused by mistakes made at his birth. The jury verdict was the largest in recent history. The jury found that a doctor and a community medical center were negligent in their treatment of a woman and her baby boy. The incident involved the doctor being two hours late to an emergency with the woman's unborn child. After he arrived, he induced labor, which actually made the situation worse. Ultimately, the baby was born with cerebral palsy, no use of his hands, blindness and mental retardation. 

Doc Accused of Getting Too Physical with Exams
A New Jersey doctor accused of sexually abusing 15 female patients has pled not guilty to charges of sexual assault and attempted sexual assault. According to patients, the doctor touched them inappropriately during routine exams. One woman claims she was given a breast exam while seeking treatment for a sinus infection. She also claimed the breast exam involved more touching than is normally required. Prosecutors also have a tape of the doctor running his hands over a patient's breasts, inner thighs and genital area after examining her for back pain. Several other patients have claimed that the doctor became physically aroused during exams and attempted to touch their genitals while they were seeking treatment for everything from a cold to a blood work-up.  

Birth Defects Tied to Fertility Treatments
Infants conceived with techniques commonly used in fertility clinics are two to four times more likely to have certain birth defects than are infants conceived naturally, a new study has found. The findings applied to single births only and found defects including heart problems, cleft lips, cleft palates and abnormalities in the esophagus or rectum. Fertility treatments seemed to double the chance of such defects; whereas cleft lips occur in one in 950 natural births in the United States, the study found that the risk of cleft lips in fertility treatment births was one in 425. 

How Pennsylvania Let Incompetent Doctor Continue to Practice
In 1979, surgeons at Lankenau Hospital used a string of pejoratives to describe an aspiring doctor from Phoenixville: parasitic, alienating, clumsy and unkempt. Despite these reviews, the doctor proceeded to earn his medical degree. Though he continued his bad behavior, he received little interference from the state, until he was arrested in 2001 and pleaded no contest to a felony drug charge in 2003, resulting in five years' probation and suspension of his medical license. However, he continued to practice medicine and illegally dispense narcotics. Now he is dealing with a second round of legal problems that began when he was arrested in June 2006 and charged with using falsified credentials to obtain his medical license. He has been charged with writing 270 illegal prescriptions for six known drug abusers.  

Nasty Intestinal Bug Spikes in U.S. Hospitals
A virulent, drug-resistant gut infection that causes potentially deadly diarrhea, especially among the old and sick, is up to 20 times more common than previously though, a large survey of U.S. hospital and health care centers finds. Thirteen in every 1,000 patients were infected or colonized with Clostridium difficile, known as C. diff, according to surveys by nearly 650 U.S. acute care and other centers. That's between 6.5 and 20 times higher than previous estimates of the nasty bacterial infection tied to overuse of antibiotics and improperly cleaned hospital rooms. On average, there may be more than 7,000 infections and 300 deaths in U.S. hospitals on any single day from C. diff. 

Off-Label Meds, Not Placebos, Should be the Real Worry
A newly released study showed that half of all American doctors who responded to a nationwide survey say they regularly prescribe placebos to patients. However, a study in 2001 found that American physicians wrote 150 million prescriptions off-label to treat conditions for reasons other than the ones for which the drugs were approved. That represents 21 percent of all prescriptions written for 160 of the most common medications used in the U.S. About three-quarters of all off-label prescriptions were written for conditions for which there was little or no scientific support to show that they worked.

Old Blood Linked to More Infections
A new study suggests that blood kept in storage for 29 days or more may double your risk for a hospital-acquired infection. The timeline of 29 days is nearly two weeks less than the current federal standard. The study tracked 422 patients receiving blood transfusions who were admitted to an intensive-care unit between July 2003 and September 2006. The rates of various infections, including pneumonia, sepsis and upper respiratory infections, appeared to be linked with the age of the blood. When more than one unit of blood was transfused, the age of the oldest unit showed the strongest relationship.

114 Hepatitis C Cases Linked to Two Las Vegas Clinics
Investigators think they've identified almost everyone who may have contracted the potentially deadly hepatitis C virus at two Las Vegas outpatient medical clinics. Officials say nine cases of the incurable blood-borne liver disease are the result of the unsafe practice of reusing syringes and medicine vials at the clinics, both of which have been closed. While officials have not attributed any deaths to the outbreak, the widow of one of the clinic's former patients has filed a lawsuit blaming her 60-year-old husband's hepatitis C diagnosis and death on unsafe medical practices. 

Half of Doctors Routinely Prescribe Placebos
Half of all American doctors responding to a nationwide survey say they regularly prescribe placebos to patients. The results trouble medical ethicists, who say more research is needed to determine whether doctors must deceive patients in order for placebos to work. The most common placebos the American doctors prescribed were headache pills and vitamins, but a significant number also reported prescribing antibiotics and sedatives. The American Medical Association discourages the use of placebos by doctors when represented as helpful.

Doctor and Family Dispute Cause of Lewisburg Man's Death
A Union County jury will decide whether a former Evangelical Community Hospital emergency room physician was negligent in failing to diagnose heart disease in a 53-year-old man who died three weeks after being treated in 2005. The family of the man filed a lawsuit against the doctor and the hospital alleging medical negligence led to his death. When he visited the emergency room with complaints of fatigue, neck and left shoulder pain and arm numbness, and high blood pressure, the doctor did not diagnose him with a possible heart condition, which was the correct move. Instead, she diagnosed him with neck arthritis and sent him home with painkillers. He died three weeks later.  

PA Dentists Being Barred from Dating Patients
Dentists who find their love match sitting in the patients' chair must end the professional relationship and wait a few months before dating, according to new state regulations. The new rules say that any sexual conduct with a current patient, including "words, gestures or expressions, actions or any combination thereof," is subject to disciplinary action by the State Board of Dentistry. The regulations apply to dentists, hygienists and other state-licensed dental practitioners engaged in sexual conduct with patients they have treated within the past three months. 

Jury Awards $400,000 to Deaf Patient Denied Interpreter Services
A New Jersey jury awarded $400,000 to a deaf patient whose doctor refused her an interpreter, resulting in a wake-up call for all professionals that they risk liability for disability discrimination. The patient claimed she repeatedly asked her doctor to hire a sign language interpreter. The doctor refused, arguing that he was a solo practitioner and couldn't afford the estimated $150 to $200 per visit an interpreter would cost. The deaf patient argued that she was deprived of the opportunity to participate in and understand her medical situation and the treatment her doctor was providing her for lupus.  

Ties Between Doctors and Stent Makers Queried
Heart doctors and makers of medical devices meeting for their annual convention got a sobering piece of news: two senators are asking tough questions about financial ties between the doctors and the companies. The two lawmakers want answers regarding the financial relationship between doctors and device manufacturers and drug producers. 

New Study Questions PCIs for Chest Pain
Hundreds of thousands of Americans may be having costly and unnecessary heart procedures for chest pain, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. More than half of patients with angina are undergoing angioplasty-stent procedures, known as PCI, without first getting a stress test to determine if clogged arteries are restricting blood flow to their hearts. For patients with stable angina, such procedures, which average about $14,000 nationally, are no better at stopping heart attacks and deaths than medications.

$10.7 Million for Woman Forced to Wait for Brain Scan
A jury has awarded nearly $11 million to a woman who became partially paralyzed after waiting two hours for a hospital brain scan. Jurors found a New York City hospital negligent in caring for the woman after she was brought to the emergency room with a fractured skull after a fall. Her lawyers argued that the woman was cleared for a brain scan two hours before she got one. She was subsequently neglected in the emergency room as she lapsed into a coma and now has no movement in her left side and must use a wheelchair. 

Police: Nurse Killed Child
A Lancaster nurse has been charged with causing the death of a chronically ill boy while caring for him in 2002. The woman was substituting for the boy's regular nurse the night before and the morning of the boy's death. The nurse administered a lethal dose of morphine to the boy, which resulted in his death. A six-year investigation included an exhumation of the boy's body for autopsy and numerous medical opinions on when the morphine was administered and its effects. 

Woman Who Didn't Know She was Pregnant Sues Hospital
A woman who arrived at an emergency room with abdominal pain subsequently gave birth to a child in a hospital restroom. She claims she didn't know she was pregnant and is now suing the hospital. She claims that the medical staff should have known that she was pregnant and missed obvious signs of labor. The baby went into respiratory arrest and suffered brain damage due to treatment providers' negligence, and the mother now wants the hospital to pay for the baby's lifelong medical care.

Questions Abound in Delaware County Jailhouse Death
A Pennsylvania woman who was arrested for shoplifting and held in jail for five weeks died while in custody. Her family is suing the jail and the company that runs it because the woman was a diagnosed schizophrenic whose family was never alerted to her incarceration. After the woman collapsed and experienced a seizure, jail staff failed to have her transferred to a hospital until nearly an hour and a half after her seizure, which rendered the woman brain dead.     

Top Psychiatrist Didn't Report Drug Makers' Pay
One of the nation's most influential psychiatrists earned more than $2.8 million in consulting arrangements with drug makers from 2000 to 2007, failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university and violated federal research rules. The psychiatrist is the most prominent figure to date in a series of disclosures that is shaking the world of academic medicine and seems likely to force broad changes in the relationships between doctors and drug makers.

New York Court Applies Negligence Standard to Second Injury During Medical Exam
After filing a personal injury claim against a driver who rear-ended him in a fender-bender, a New York man was required to submit to a medical examination by a physician of the defendant's insurer's choosing. However, during the exam, the man suffered a second injury when the doctor grabbed his head, rotated his neck and pulled. This caused the man various neck and nerve injuries and a second suit. A New York court subsequently decided that the doctor's actions were negligent, rather than malpractice.  

Attorney Claims Penis Amputation Medically Necessary
A lawyer for a Kentucky doctor being sued over the amputation of a patient's penis claims the procedure was "medically necessary" and authorized by the patient. When the man agreed to his initial circumcision surgery for inflammation, he gave his doctor permission to perform any medical procedure deemed necessary.  

Oregon Hospital Tells Grandpa He's Pregnant
A 71-year-old grandfather treated for agonizing abdominal pain received this surprising news in the hospital's paperwork: "Based on your visit today, we know you are pregnant." Hospital administrators claim that an errant keystroke caused the hospital's computer to spit out the wrong discharge instructions for the man. 

Kentucky Man Claims Penis Amputated Without Consent
A Kentucky man who claims his penis was removed without his consent during what was supposed to be a circumcision has sued the doctor who performed the surgery. The man was circumcised to better treat inflammation, but the doctor removed his penis without consulting either him or his wife or giving them the opportunity to seek a second opinion. The couple is suing for unspecified damages. The case is similar to a suit in which a man was awarded $2.3 million after his penis and left testicle were removed wtihout his consent. 

Nuclear Waste Piling Up at U.S. Hospitals
Tubes, capsules and pellets of used radioactive material are piling up in the basements and locked closets of hospitals and research installations around the country, stoking fears they could get lost or, worse, stolen by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs. For years, truckloads of low-level nuclear waste rom most of the U.S. were taken to a rural South Carolina landfill. There, items such as the rice-size radioactive seeds for treating cancer and pencil-thin nuclear tubes used in industrial gauges were sealed in concrete and buried. But a South Carolina law took effect on July 1 that ended all disposal of radioactive material at the landfill, leaving 36 states with no place to throw out the nuclear waste. 

Pennsylvania Hospitals Have High Blood-Infection Deaths
Nine hospitals in Southeastern Pennsylvania had higher-than-expected death rates for patients with bloodstream infections last year, according to a statewide report card on care. Experts said the deadly bloodstream infections represented a growing national problem that local hospitals must do more to prevent them. The infections killed more than 4,200 patients in Pennsylvania last year, representing a 53 percent rise since 2003.

On Fire in the Operating Room
Surgical fires at least five times as common as once thought, affecting between 550 and 650 patients a year, including 20 to 30 who suffer serious, disfiguring burns. Every year, one or two people die this way. In Pennsylvania, fires occur in one in every 87,646 operations, according to the latest 2007 data. That amounts to 28 fires a year in Pennsylvania alone and allows researchers to estimate with greater certainty the incidents in the rest of the country.

Hospital Bracelets Face Hurdles as They Fix Hazards
New York's 11 public hospitals are at the forefront of a national movement to standardize color coding of hospital wristbands to designate patient conditions, such as "Do Not Resuscitate" or allergies. While the goal is to prevent potentially dangerous mistakes, some are concerned that the wristbands can also violate a patient's privacy. For instance, branding a patient by the end-of-life choices may inadvertently broadcast those choices to family and friends who have not been consulted.  

Hot Tip: Have Your Heart Attack in Seattle
What are your chances of surviving cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting? In a word, remote. But some doctors are turning that around, boosting survival rates to previously unthinkable levels. However, the bad news is that your likelihood of being in that lucky group of survivors depends a great deal on where you live.   

Lawyer to Docs: "Sorry Works"
A local lawyer who represents many doctors in medical malpractice cases has written a book about why all doctors should apologize after making a medical mistake. The primary point of the book is that if more doctors empathized with their patients' adverse medical outcomes, malpractice suits could be reduced dramatically.  

Study Finds Few Pain Doctors Face Criminal Prosecutions
A new study has found that doctors are rarely criminally prosecuted or sanctioned in connection with the prescribing of narcotic painkillers. The study found that 725 doctors, or about 0.1 percent of practicing physicians, had been prosecuted or sanctioned by state medical boards between 1998 and 2006 on charges arising from illegally or improperly prescribing narcotics. Of that group, 25 doctors specialized in pain treatment. "The widely publicized chilling effect of physician prosecution on physicians concerned with legal scrutiny over prescribing opioids appears disproportionate to the relatively few cases," the study reported. 

Consumer Ads for Medical Devices Subject of Senate Panel
As makers of medical devices like artificial knees and heart stents increasingly pitch their products directly to consumers, some lawmakers, medical groups and others are calling for restrictions on such advertisements, claiming they mislead patients. Experts maintain that the advertising of a medical device can have more of an impact on a patient's well-being than a drug, because devices often require surgery to implant and may remain inside the body for years. The Senate Special Committee on Aging plans to hold a hearing about direct-to-consumer promotions of medical devices. The chairman of the committee said he was holding the hearing because he thought that the Food and Drug Administration might have to increase its scrutiny of medical device promotions, much as it had done with pharmaceutical advertisements. 

E.R. Patients Often Left Confused After Visits
A vast majority of emergency room patients are discharged without understanding the treatment they received of how to care for themselves once they get home, researchers say. And that can lead to medication errors and serious complications that can send them right back to the hospital. A new study found that 78 percent of patients did not understand at least two or more areas of their treatment or recovery instructions. The greatest confusion surrounded home care.

Small Patients, Big Consequences in Medical Errors
Medical mistakes, though common in adults, can have more serious consequences in children, doctors say. A study found that problems due to medications occurred in 11 percent of children who were in the hospital, and that 22 percent of them were preventable. Children are often victims of diagnostic errors, incorrect procedures or tests, infections and injuries. Medical errors also pose a greater threat to children than to adults for a number of reasons, including their smaller size and their kidneys, liver and immune system are still developing.  

Defibrillators are Lifesaver, But Risks Give Pause
The implanted defibrillator, a device that can automatically shock an erratically beating heart back to a normal rhythm, has been proved to save lives. But in the last two years the number of patients receiving defibrillators has actually declined, as more doctors and patients decide the risks and uncertainties the devices pose may outweigh their potential benefits. What makes doctors and patients increasingly wary, though, is a string of highly publicized recalls in recent years, along with mounting evidence suggesting that a vast majority of people who get a defibrillator never need it.  

Hospitals' Mistakes Go Unreported
For several years now, hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have been required to report medical mistakes and serious complications to state agencies charged with reducing medical errors. But some hospitals aren't fully complying, undermining efforts to improve patient safety. In New Jersey, five of the state's 80 hospitals failed to report a single preventable mistake last year. In Pennsylvania, some facilities didn't report any serious events or even the near misses that might have harmed patients. 

Virginia Patients in Pennsylvania Given Inadequate Cancer Care
Some 55 prostate cancer patients were given too-low doses of radiation treatment at the local Veterans Affairs hospital in the past six years, and federal investigators want to know why. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it is inspecting the Philadelphia VA Medical Center's facilities and procedures to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Hospital officials had announced the possible underdoses in July. Officials said they were reviewing records of 114 cancer patients to see which ones might have received the wrong radiation doses. Two of the 114 patients have since died.  

Hospital and Doctor Deals Up for Review
A sweeping overhaul of the government rules regulating financial arrangements between doctors and hospitals will likely force many of them to undo or restructure joint ventures, leasing deals and other contracts for medical services. The changes will bring doctors, doctor-owned entities and hospitals that use such services back to the negotiating table with their lawyers. The changes also raise barriers for doctors who want to invest in ancillary lines of business involving medical services such as testing. 

Are the Mentally Ill Falling Through the Cracks?
The Kia Johnson case, in which a woman with mental illness was charged with killing a pregnant teenager and stealing her baby, drew worldwide news coverage this summer. That startling homicide, though, was just one of at least 10 serious incidents involving local residents with mental illness that have occurred in Allegheny County neighborhoods in less than a year. Incidents such as these have led people to ask: Are people falling through the cracks of the community health system? And what might be done to prevent such problems from occurring?

After Son's Death, Family Feels Deceived
After their son suffered a severe head injury, his family said that they declined several requests for permission by an organ donor program to donate his organs. However, the Gift of Life Donor Program, which connects transplant hospitals with potential organ donors, took his organs because he agreed to be an organ donor when he got his driver's license. The family claims that Gift of Life led them to believe that despite his organ donor status, they would be able to make the final decision on whether or not his organs would be taken. In the end, his organs were donated.   

Court Calls $8-a-Day Medical Malpractice Award for Amputee a Miscarriage of Justice
In an unusual if not unprecedented parsing of a medical malpractice verdict, a New Jersey state appeals court ruled that a $100,000 award for pain and suffering was too low because it amounted to $8 a day for the rest of the plaintiff's life. The plaintiff, who was forced to wait for necessary surgeries as her condition worsened, eventually lost her leg. The judge ordered a new trial on the $100,000, finding it "grossly insufficient and a miscarriage of justice." 

$11 Million Verdict in Malpractice
A woman complaining of headaches and numbness made three hospital visits before being finally given a CT scan that showed she had a brain tumor. She subsequently sued three emergency room doctors for negligence in their care, which left her blind, paralyzed and brain damaged. A jury awarded her $11.2 million, including $5.9 million for future medical expenses that can be paid over time.  

Transplant Study Revives Questions Over When to Declare Donors Dead
A report on three heart transplants involving babies is focusing attention on a touchy issue in the organ donation field: When and how can someone be declared dead? For decades, organs have typically been removed only after doctors determine that a donor's brain has completely stopped working. In the case of the three infants, all were on life support and showed little brain function, but they didn't meet the criteria for brain death.  

Lawsuit Alleges Kickbacks Paid to Local Doctors
A medical supply company has filed suit against six out-of-state medical device companies, alleging they made kickback payments to several local doctors to gain a competitive edge. More than a dozen physicians also are mentioned in the suit, with a listing of payments allegedly made to them by the defendants. The payments ranged from less than $100 to more than $8 million. The lawsuit alleges that companies blocked them out of the market with inferior and more costly products by offering kickbacks "for the purpose of gaining exclusive access to the lucrative replacement hip, knee and joint industry and to the orthopedic industry in general." 

VA Hospital Investigating Its Treatment of Cancer Patients
In the last six years, 114 prostate-cancer patients at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center might have received radiation doses below what was prescribed. Two patients have since died with mixed results for the other patients. VA officials are also investigating how an Air Force veteran on a blood thinner had his blood drawn twice and was later put in a research study without his knowledge or consent. 

More States Shred Bills for Awful Medical Errors
Hospitals in nearly half the states in the nation now say they won't bill patients for the worst kind of medical mistakes, including operating on the wrong body part or the wrong person, or giving someone the wrong blood. The list has more than doubled since February when hospital associations in 11 states urged their members to waive payment for specific errors dubbed "never events" because they should never happen.

Early Test for Cancer Isn't Always Best Course
For years, patients have been told that early cancer detection saves lives. However, a panel of leading experts recently offered exactly the opposite advice. They urged doctors to stop screening older men for prostate cancer, which will kill an estimated 28,600 men in the United States this year. The reality is that while some cancer screening tests clearly save lives, the benefits of other screening tests are less clear and may actually do harm. 

Feds Warn Doctors Not to Perform Prostate Screenings After 75
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force told doctors that they should stop routine prostate cancer screenings of men over age 75 because there is more evidence of harm than benefit. The task force found that evidence of the benefits of treatment based on routine screening of this age group are small to none, while treatment often causes moderate or substantial harm, including erectile dysfunction and bladder and bowel control problems.  

Probe Focuses on Outpatient Services at a Psychiatric Clinic
Community mental health care provided to adults by the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic is the target of a state-ordered probe that includes a temporary halt on new referrals to those services. State officials are concerned about a series of deaths and other serious events involving local residents with mental illnesses who received care from the clinic.  

Mother and Doctor Face Trials in Child's Death
The mother and a doctor of a 6-month-old girl who died in May have been charged with homicide and neglect. The girl's pediatrician was charged with neglect after police found that she failed to report suspicions of abuse to authorities as required by state law. The girl died after being brought to a local hospital. She was scalded, bitten and choked with bruises and cuts covering her body.  

Government Intervenes in Psych Ward After Rash of Deaths
After a series of deaths and other serious events involving local residents with mental illness, a top state official has called a temporary halt to outpatient referrals to the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. The clinic is being investigated after six out of 10 serious incidents that occurred in recent months in Allegheny County involved people who had received outpatient mental health services from the clinic. 

Med Students Oversharing on Facebook
Researchers at the University of Florida found that the school's medical students had posted pictures and comments on their Facebook pages that they likely wouldn't want their future patients to see. They studied 800 profiles and found that nearly all of the pages contained offensive material that was available for public viewing.

8 Tips for Surviving a Hospital Stay
Nearly a quarter of a million deaths in hospitals nationwide were found to be preventable. However, there is something you can do to improve the chances of surviving a hospital stay. All you need are family or friends who can oversee your hospital care in an effort to prevent medical errors. 

Local Comedian Sues Hospital After Loss of Hand
A Philadelphia comedian is suing Frankford Hospital after a medication error resulted in the loss of her hand. The comedian was born with a birth defect that would cause a deadly reaction if she was administered the blood thinner heparin. Even though her allergy was noted on all of her medical charts and an 8 by 10 inch sign reading "NO HEPARIN" taped to the wall above her head, she was injected with heparin three times while she was asleep and unable to object. On four other occasions, she refused the treatment, once having to push a nurse away from her. By the time she was discharged, she had sustained irreversible damage that led to the amputation of her hand. 

Surgeon Sued for Giving Anesthetized Patient Temporary Tattoo
A Camden County woman filed a lawsuit accusing her orthopedic surgeon of "rubbing a temporary tattoo of a red rose" on her belly while she was under anesthesia. The patient discovered the tattoo below her panty line the morning after the surgery. The surgeon claims he has done the same with many patients in an attempt to lift their spirits.  

Hospital Bullies Take a Toll on Patient Safety
The number of doctors who yell, curse, throw things, ignore questions, act impatient and insult colleagues is growing. A recent study has found that such disruptive behavior by doctors can cause medical errors that lead to patient harm. Beginning in January, a hospital accrediting agency will require hospitals to establish codes of conduct that define inappropriate behaviors and create plans for dealing with them. 

Family Files Lawsuit Over Death in Psych Ward
The daughter of a woman who died unnoticed on the floor of a hospital psychiatric unit called for criminal prosecution of the workers who did nothing to help her. The woman had spent nearly 24 hours in the emergency waiting room before collapsing to the floor and being ignored for an hour before she died. The woman's family will also be suing the hospital, the city and the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation for $25 million. 

Doctors Still Taking Drug Company Freebies
Four out of five doctors surveyed said they let drug and device makers buy them food and drinks despite recent efforts to tighten ethics rules and avoid conflicts of interest. The national survey also found that family doctors were more likely to meet with industry sales representatives, and that cardiologists were more likely to pocket fees than other specialists.

Video of Dying Mental Patient Being Ignored Spurs Changes at Brooklyn Hospital
A videotape recently surfaced showing a patient collapsing onto a floor in a Brooklyn hospital after waiting nearly 24 hours to be seen, and lying there for about an hour while hospital workers did nothing for her. The patient soon died.  

Hospital Bar Codes Not a Perfect Rx
Bar codes have long been touted as the perfect solution to medication mistakes in hospitals. But bar codes make new problems and aren't the panacea that safety advocates expected. Researchers recently found that bar coding has not yet been proven to reduce medication errors, and often the shortcuts that caregivers develop undermine its effectiveness.  

After Hip Replacement, A Lawsuit
Many people following surgeons' advice to use experimental hip implants are unaware that the manufacturer of the implants are paying their surgeons tens of thousands of dollars a year as consultants. In recent years, such payments to doctors from medical implant manufacturers and drug companies have become increasingly controversial.  

Better Risk Disclosure Needed for Those Receiving Donated Organs
A case last year in which patients who contracted HIV from the donated organs of a 38-year-old man who died in a car crash shows the need for more standard risk disclosures. Though most donated organs are tested for infectious diseases and other conditions that could be transmitted, there are wide variations in disclosure to patients among hospitals.

WHO Issues Checklist to Make Operations Safer
The World Health Organization issues guidelines aimed at reducing complications and deaths from the rising numbers of operations now being performed. The guidelines are a list of simple safety checks that the health organization said could halve the rate of surgical complications. The list is intended to improve anesthetic safety practices, avoid infections and improve communication among members of surgical teams.  

Fast Patient Turnover Spreads Bugs in Hospitals
Overcrowded hospitals that try to cope with growing patient loads by churning them through more quickly may be helping the spread of drug-resistant germs. As populations grow, and as people live longer lives, this problem will only worsen. Hospitals filled to capacity are more likely to have outbreaks of the superbug MRSA and other infections. Also, studies show that doctors, nurses and other health care workers do not wash their hands as well and as frequently as recommended during times of understaffing and high workload. 

Two Families Settle for $5 Million in Malpractice Suits
Two women, who died as a result of medical malpractice at Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre hospital, have settled lawsuits for a combined $5 million. One woman collapsed and died 11 hours after she was discharged from the emergency room. The other woman died 12 hours after undergoing surgery to repair a fractured ankle when nurses treated her with the wrong medication. 

Doctors Say Medication is Overused in Dementia
The use of antipsychotic drugs to tamp down the agitation, combative behavior and outbursts of dementia patients has soared, especially in the elderly. Sales of newer antipsychotics totaled $13.1 billion in 2007, up from $4 billion in 2000. Part of this increase can be traced to prescriptions in nursing homes. Researchers estimate that about a third of all nursing home patients have been given antipsychotic drugs.  

Doctors May Provide Addictive Drugs Online
Government regulators are preparing to allow highly addictive medications, including painkillers, to be prescribed online, a goal long-sought by health insurers and large employers. The concern is that patients are more likely to abuse these treatments, and their prescriptions should be monitored more closely. Supporters, however, claim that electronic prescriptions will actually avoid deadly medication errors. 

Call for Crackdown on Docs Who Peddle Human Growth Hormones
Both doctors and legislators are joining the battle to regulate growth hormones, which doctors are prescribing at a rising risk. While it may seem odd that a doctor would prescribe a drug intended for older female cancer victims to a young man, it's currently standard operating procedure in some of the nation's anti-aging and weight loss clinics. 

Infection Workers Battle Bugs and Bad Habits
Stopping the spread of a potentially deadly drug-resistant staph infection has riveted the attention of the nation's hospitals and nursing homes, especially after a year of headlines and public panic. But frontline experts gathered for a national conference said they wonder how they're supposed to beat MRSA when they can't get their colleagues to wash their hands.  

Medical Litter: Device Debris Poses Serious Risk
Hundreds of patients are learning the hard way about a growing but under-recognized problem: medical devices that break or malfunction, leaving behind potentially deadly debris. Earlier this year, the federal Food and Drug Administration officials warned clinicians about the danger of devices that litter patients' bodies with broken stents, torn balloons, fractured wires and stray parts ranging from catheter tips to drill bits. 

Italy Doctors Investigated for Needless Surgeries
Police have arrested 13 doctors form a clinic in Milan who investigators suspect performed needless and sometimes fatal operations to make more money. Three of the doctors were arrested on suspicion of murder for allegedly having performed on several patients "abnormal or invasive surgeries, without taking into consideration the fragility of the patients because of age or their medical condition." Police officials said five patients at the clinic are believed to have died after suspected needless surgeries. 

New York Psychiatrist Settles Malpractice Lawsuit
A former psychiatrist who confided to a patient that he wanted to kill six people and asked the patient to help him find a handgun has settled a medical malpractice lawsuit with the man. Richard Karpf agreed to pay $365,000 to Dennis White, a former patient who called police in 2003 telling them of Karpf's intentions. 

Malpractice Victims Out of Luck in Virginia
Virginia's cap on malpractice damages is unconscionable and unfair, and it will become ever more so when it tops out at $2 million. That $2 million is for all damages, medical expenses and lost income as well as pain and suffering, and other non-economic damages. With rising medical expenses, that cap will impact more victims of malpractice.

If you think you may have a Medical Malpractice case, we can help.  Contact us today.