Minnesota Sees Spike in Medical Errors at Hospitals There

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Tribune reports a sharp increase in medical errors in the state.

"Minnesota's annual report on adverse events -- a public accounting of preventable errors by hospitals -- shows 13 serious medication errors in the year ended last Oct. 6. By comparison, only 14 medication errors were reported in the previous three years combined."

See the full article here: Medication errors rise sharply at Minnesota hospitals

In Massachusetts, Psychiatrist in Rebecca Riley Case Settles for $2.5 Million

Medical malpractice attorney Benjamin Novotny has been getting plenty of press lately related to the settlement of the medical malpractice case against Dr. Kifuji, a psychiatrist who treated young Rebecca Riley who died at age 4 of an overdose of psychotropic drugs. The case against Kifuji, who prescribed Clonidine (a sedative), Depakote (a mood stabilizer), and Seroquel (an anti-psychotic) to the girl, had to await trial after the criminal trials of the girl's parents who were both found guilty. The $2.5 million settlement was the limit of the doctor's insurance. The settlement money will be put into trusts for Rebecca's siblings who are now 10 and 15 years old, and be used for education programs. Below are related articles in the press and Novtony's appearance on CNN's In Session commenting on the case.

The Boston Globe - Tufts settles suit against doctor in girl’s death for $2.5m
Boston Herald - Settlement no relief for slain child’s kin
Patriot Ledger - Rebecca Riley's estate gets $2.5 million in lawsuit settlement with psychiatrist
Wicked Local Weymouth - Rebecca Riley’s estate receives $2.5M



Novotny's law firm Lubin & Meyer has posted a trial report on its website that carries additional details of the case and the settlement: Lawsuit of Rebecca Riley Estate.
Kifuji continues to be employed by Tufts. Comments are welcome.

The Hill: Obama Address Causes Heartburn for Tort Lawyers

In last night's State of the Union address, President Obama held medical malpractice tort reform out as a sacrificial lamb. The Hill's Healthwatch carries more on the president's thinking on tort reform in this articls: Obama address causes heartburn for tort lawyers .

A related article also in The Hill: Senate Democrats greet call for medical malpractice reform with skepticism.

Malpractice Caps Challenged in West Virginia

An article in Renal & Urology News reports on a West Virginia couple challenging that state's medical malpractice award caps. According to the article, West Virginai has a cap of $500,000 for pain and suffering. The couple, who were awarded by a jury $1.5 million in damages and $129,000 for medical expenses and lost wages, have had their award cut to $500,000 combined.

According to the report:

"The couple is arguing that the law capping damages is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right to a trial by jury, and it prevents the jury from making the ultimate decision in the case. The case has been appealed to the West Virginia Supreme court."

Read the full article: West Virgina Malpractice Award Caps Challenged.

How to Reduce Medical Malpractice Claims? Study Says Surgical Checklists

Reuters reports on a study from Amsterdam which concluded that "...nearly a third of the malpractice claims arose from mistakes that likely would have been caught by a [surgical] checklist." The article also quotes Atul Gawande from the Harvard School of Public Health, "a surgeon who has written extensively on the topic." Said Gawande:

"This kind of evidence indicates that surgeons who do not use one of these checklists are endangering patients..."

According to the article, "only about one in four U.S. hospitals use one of the three checklists that have been proven to work." To read the full article, please click on Reuters Surgical Checklists.

In Connecticut, Malpractice Cases Missing from Physician Website

An investigative report by Matthew Kauffman for the Hartford Courant reveals that a Connecticut health department website, that is supposed to provide updated information medical malpractice payments made on physician profiles, was missing such information on more than 100 doctor profiles.

"The profiles — posted on the health department's website in part to help consumers choose physicians — are supposed to include information on all malpractice payments made in the past 10 years. But a review by the Courant found more than 100 doctors whose malpractice cases are missing. Overall, about one in six physicians who have made payments in recent years for harming or killing patients are presented as having completely clean records."

To read more, see the Hartford Courant article: Malpractice Cases Missing from State Website.

Huffington Post Puts Defensive Medicine on Trial

An article on Huffington Post puts defensive medicine on trial: It's Time to Call Their Bluff: "Defensive Medicine" Is a Fraud. The January 6 post by Joanne Doroshow states:

While anonymous doctor surveys provide the principal foundation for the argument that widespread "defensive medicine" exists, credible organizations who have looked into the issue have had a very hard time identifying pervasive "defensive medicine," especially when managed care companies are paying the bill.

But, writes Doroshow, there is another issue.

In these anonymous surveys, doctors never actually identify specific tests or procedures they have conducted for the primary purpose of avoiding a lawsuit, let alone a service they would no longer perform if severe "tort reform" were enacted. There is no better illustration of this than the June 1, 2009, New Yorker magazine article called "The Cost Conundrum; What a Texas town can teach us about health care," by Dr. Atul Gawande. This widely-circulated article explored why the town of McAllen, Texas "was the country's most expensive place for health care."

Click through to read the full Huffington Post, and to link through to The New Yorker article Cost Conundrum.

Illinois Man Gets $17 Million for Brain Injury Lawsuit

An article in the ProvisioHerald reports that a Melrose Park, IL, man received a $17.7 million settlement for a medical malpractice lawsuit for incuring "a brain injury at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center due to medical negligence." The lawsuit alleged that the nursing staff failed to properly monitor the man's intracranial pressure (he had suffered a "brain stem herniation"requiring an external ventricular drain. To read the article detailing the lawsuit and injuries, please click on: Illinois brain injury lawsuit settles for $17.7 million.

In California, Never Event Reporting Request Viewed by Hospitals as Set Up for Legal Action

CALIFORNIA — A report in the Ventura County Star describes reaction by hospital officials to California's call for reporting of "never events" (major medical errors) as fear of a set up for legal action. 87 of the state's hospitals have reported no major medical error in 3 years. Hospitals prefer that the state focus on education and prevention than requiring hospitals to sign a form. See the full article here: State inspectors ask some hospitals to be sure that they haven't had severe medical errors.

Boston's Andrew Meyer Selected 'Lawyer of the Year'

Boston, MA — Andrew C. Meyer, Jr. has been named Best Lawyers® 2011 Boston Medical Malpractice 'Lawyer of the Year' according to a report in Yahoo! News. Meyer is the founding partner at Lubin & Meyer PC, a law firm focused on medical malpractice and catastrophic personal injury litigation with attorneys practicing in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Meyer has consistently achieved record-setting verdicts and settlements, including one of the largest personal injury awards in Massachusetts' history — $30 million dollars including interest. He has been selected to the Best Lawyers in America each year since its inception

In Ohio, Jury Awards $13.9M in Birth Injury Lawsuit

Via Cerebral Palsy Law News we learned of news of a Trumbull County jury delivering a $13.9 million award in medical malpractice suit involving alleged birth injuries leading to cerebral palsy caused by failure to perform a Cesarian. This according to a report in the Warren Ohio Tribune Chronicle. Read full article here: Cerebral Palsy Verdict.

Medical Malpractice Claims Declining, Says Insurer

Schaumburg, Illinois – Data collected from 1,600 hospitals in years 1997 through 2007 reveals that health care organizations’ medical malpractice claim frequency is slightly declining and severity is leveling off, according to a report released by Zurich, an leading insurer of hospitals and health care organizations in North America.

The fifth annual Zurich benchmarking report on claims trends in the healthcare industry shows that claims severity, or the average amount per claim, has stabilized over the past several years. The average annual rise over the past 11 years is four percent. Additionally, Zurich reports that teaching and children’s hospitals have higher claim severity than acute care community hospitals and outpatient facilities. Non-profit hospitals have the lowest severity; and among non-profits, faith-based institutions have the lowest severity of all.

The report is now available online and can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/ajsqJS

Study Reveals Cost of Malpractice Insurance, Verdicts and Settlements and Defensive Medicine Accounts for Only About 2.4% of US Healthcare Spend

A recent study published in the public policy journal Health Affairs, Low Costs Of Defensive Medicine, Small Savings From Tort Reform, provides important information about the costs of medical malpractice litigation and defensive medicine in comparison to the total cost of U.S. health care. The study shows that the medical liability system, a vital means for holding health care professionals accountable to accepted standards, amounts to only 2.4 percent of American health care expenditures.

In light of Health and Human Services (HHS) data showing that the U.S. spent $7,681 per person in 2008 on health care, the study results suggest that only $185 of that amount goes toward malpractice insurance, "defensive" medical tests, legal costs and the verdicts and settlements paid to patients. Contrary to the negative attention that litigation received during the recent national health care dialogue, this figure seems surprisingly modest given what Americans pay for other hedges against risk, such as car, home and life insurance.

Learn more at Health Affairs.

In Minnesota, Jury Finds Hospital Negligent for Death of Woman

Minneapolis television station KARE11 carries news of a Wright County jury returning a $4.6 million verdict in a medical malpractice case involving the death of a 36-year-old wife and mother, finding the medical center negligent. Details of the case are not provided.

Best Lawyers Selects Three from Boston's Lubin & Meyer - Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury

Boston, MA — Lubin & Meyer PC is pleased to announce that three of its Boston plaintiff attorneys have been included in the 2011 edition of Best Lawyers®, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession.

Founding partner Andrew C. Meyer, Jr. has been named a “Best Lawyer” every year since the publication’s inception in 1995. Robert M. Higgins joined Meyer on the list since 2008, while colleague William J. Thompson has been included on the list for the past two years.

See full news item at: Best Lawyers Boston

Study Says Policies Needed for Disclosure of Large-Scale Adverse Effects

Health care organizations should disclose medical mistakes that affect multiple patients even if patients were not harmed by the event, according to a research paper funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Policy and published in the September 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Medical mistakes that affect multiple patients, known as large-scale adverse events (LSAEs) to researchers, are incidents or series of related incidents that harm or could potentially harm multiple patients. These events, which can include incompletely sterilized surgical equipment, poor laboratory quality control and equipment malfunctions, are often identified after care has been provided and can affect thousands of patients.

According to research, disclosure policies for adverse events that affect individual patients are becoming more common among health care organizations but often fail to address how to disclose LSAEs that could have affected many patients.

Researchers weighed ethical considerations of whether to disclose such events. For instance, is disclosure ethical if patients were unlikely to have been physically harmed by the event but could be harmed psychologically by the disclosure? The authors reviewed instances in which health care institutions disclosed an LSAE and analyzed the method of disclosure and existing disclosure policies.

They concluded that, in most cases, these events should be disclosed and offered these recommendations:

• Develop an institutional policy. Organizations should have a clear set of procedures for managing the disclosure process, notifying patients and the public, coordinating follow-up diagnostic testing and treatment and responding to regulatory bodies.
• Plan for disclosures. Disclosures should be made proactively, unless a strong, ethically justifiable argument can be made not to do so. The method of disclosure may depend on the event, but patients should be informed personally and all at the same time.
• Communicate with the public. Organizations should assume that media coverage of a large-scale adverse event is inevitable. To build public trust, media responses should demonstrate the organization's commitment to honesty and transparency.
• Plan for patient follow-up. Organizations should provide follow-up diagnostic testing and treatment to patients affected by the LSAE and address any anxiety caused by the disclosure. Patients who have suffered physical harm due to an event resulting rom a preventable error or system failure should be compensated.

This post based on AHRQ press release. For more on this issue, the full article is available to read at the New England Journal of Medicine web site at:

New Hampshire: Supreme Court Finds Negligence Is Jury's To Decide in Med-Mal Trial

CONCORD, NH — Via NH Medical Malpractice News: The New Hampshire Supreme Court overturned the trial court's decision in a medical malpractice lawsuit, Beckles v. Madden, agreeing with Lubin & Meyer attorneys for the plaintiff in finding that the burden of proof for negligence in a med mal trial should be left for the jury to decide. Attorney Benjamin Novotny, argued the case before the court. Click here for more information and for a link to read the full opinion, issued April 9, 2010.

Maine: $1 Million Jury Award for Failure to Diagnose Cancer

PORTLAND, ME — A Maine Sunday Telegram reports that a "Cumberland County jury awarded a Harpswell woman and her husband $1 million Friday in a medical malpractice suit..." for failure to diagnose her cancer. She had complained of chronic pain.

According to the article, compensatory damages to the patient were $700,000, her husband was awarded $300,000, and an addition $160,000 was for medical costs. For more information, read the article on pressherald.com.

Birth Injury Resulting in Cerebral Palsy Brings $38.75 Million Verdict

This via Cerebral Palsy Law News: Morgan & Morgan, a personal injury law firm based in Orlando Florida, reports achieving a $38,750,000 in a case of medical negligence in a case claiming failure to perform a timely C-section resulting in a birth injury to the infant. Read more at: Cerebral Palsy Law News.

In California $16.5M Jury Verdict Against Neurosurgeon

Riverside, California — An Associated Press article in the Silicon Valley Mercury News announces a $16.5 million verdict in a medical malpractice lawsuit against a neurosurgeon who delayed care and surgery. According the the report, the patient,

"...who had a fractured spine, was not seen until the next day and not operated on until two days after his injury. He was left a paraplegic."

See full article here: Riverside jury: $16.5M malpractice verdict