Medical Malpractice | InjuryBoard Milwaukee

The tragic deaths of two preemie infants are being blamed on human error by hospital employees at an Indiana hospital. We have discussed the problem of medication errors before, and it appears that the same problem occurred here. The two infants were given adult doses of Heparin, rather than the less powerful infant doses. Heparin is a blood thinning medication administered to adults for a...

It is amazing how different news organizations will report on the same study and spin completely different slants for their readers. A prime example concerns the AP story yesterday reporting about a study published in the May 11, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, from a panel of physicians, headed by David Studdert, an associate professor of health policy and management at...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, attack dog for big business, has launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign that purports to identify states that supposedly favor accident victims over corporations. The Chamber's campaign has been purveyed in full page ads in national circulation newspapers, on the internet, and in local papers in key states. The Chamber's efforts, and the response of the...

A story in the April 17, 2006 USA Today highlights the problem of "wrong site surgery", where surgeons operate on the wrong part of the body due to errors by the surgeon or hospital staff. The problem is increasing, according to the story:"It's getting worse," says Dennis O'Leary, who heads the non-profit Joint Commission on Accreditation of health care Organizations, which inspects more than...

Medical errors remain a leading cause of death and injury at hospitals nationwide, and the effort to improve patient safety at the facilities "is too slow and should be a cause for great alarm," according to a study released on Monday by HealthGrades, the Syracuse Post-Standard reports.For the study, researchers examined the records of Medicare beneficiaries treated at about 5,000 hospitals...

They are at it again: The Republican legislators and their insurance industry puppeteers have passed a bill designed to impede victims of medical malpractice from seeking compensation for their injuries. The bill would limit the attorneys fees that can be charged to victims of medical malpractice, leaving untouched (of course) the amount that doctors and hospitals can pay to their attorneys to...

With 98,000 deaths annually due to medical error and negligence in U.S. hospitals, the old saw, "An Ounce of Prevention is Worth A Pound of Cure" remains the best prescription for avoiding injury. Hospitals are complex systems, and doctors and nurses are busy people. Patients who take an active role in risk avoidance will do well for themselves in this environment.The American Trial Lawyers...

The hospital and insurance industries have come up with another way to insulate themselves from accountability to victims of medical malpractice: remove the incentives of attorneys to accept these cases by cutting their fees. A bill that would limit attorneys' fees in medical malpractice cases is set for hearing on Monday, February 27 in Madison. It would limit attorney fees in medical...

If we are to improve upon the alarming rate of physician misdiagnosis of illness, pay-for- performance is the way to go. But political will is going to be required to make this structural change in the health care system.A New York Times Story asks why doctors so often get it wrong in diagnosing illness. It appears that the answer lies in a failure of the health care system to reward success in...

GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin are trying once again to circumvent the jury system by introducing legislation to impose caps on jury awards in medical malpractice cases. In July, 2005, the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the statutory limits on awards for pain, suffering and disability, emphasizing that the then-existing cap of $445,755 was arbirtary and unconstitutional. Citing concerns that...

It seems the $8.5 million verdict awarded to Jessica Greenfield in a medical malpractice lawsuit last week has sparked another push at attempts to cap awards on pain and suffereing. The Wisconsin Medical Society is supporting the push for caps and giving the standard lines about doctors being forced out of the state due to high med-mal insurance premiums. However, study after study continues to...

Jeff Guzman at Napoli Bern in NY posts about the release of the most recent edition of Child Neurology which argues that, contrary to claims by obstetricians, the majority of brachial plexus injuries do not occur in utero.Jeff notes that most studies of brachial plexus injuries are done in adults, where injuries usually take several days to be apparent via EMG.However, the textbook of Child...