Posts tagged Medical Malpractice

• Jury Finds for Infant Who Lost Sight Following Birth

  David Lowe | November 13, 2006 4:11 PM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  A Pennsylvania jury has awarded a 6-year old boy $20 million in a medical malpractice case after he went blind almost immediately following his birth. Those held responsible by the verdict included the hospital, the head of the neonatology unit, the hospital's pediatric opthamologist, and the boy's pediatrician. The boy was born premature and developed retinapathy of prematurity, an eye disease ...

• Jury Awards $15.8 Million For Cerebral Palsy Victim

  David Lowe | October 19, 2006 12:44 PM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  A Michigan court jury has awarded $15.8 million in damages for a child born with cerebral palsy allegedly the result of medical malpractice. The family's attorneys alleged that the doctors managing the birth were negligent in failing to perform a cesarean section delivery when the fetus experienced difiiculty during prolonged labor.Unfortunately, this type of tragic error occurs all too often....

• Another Hospital Medication Error Leads to Patient Death

  David Lowe | September 17, 2006 10:33 PM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• Ignore The Spin: The Math Shows That Medical Malpractice Cases Are Mostly Well Founded

  David Lowe | May 11, 2006 9:20 AM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce Slings Mud At Wisconsin Court System

  David Lowe | May 01, 2006 3:12 PM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• "Wrong Site Surgeries" On The Rise

  David Lowe | April 21, 2006 9:09 AM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• Study Says Medical Errors Leading Cause of Death in Hospitals

  David Lowe | April 05, 2006 8:28 PM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• Limiting Attorney's Fees Will Deny Justice to Malpractice Victims

  David Lowe | March 15, 2006 9:01 AM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• National Patient Safety Awareness Week--

  David Lowe | March 09, 2006 8:15 PM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• Malpractice Victims Would Lose Under Proposed Limits On Fees

  David Lowe | February 26, 2006 8:32 PM | 0 CommentsMilwaukee, WI Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...