Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

Kevin MD reports on the idea of drive through emergency rooms. Stanford Hospital & Clinics has turned the first floor of a parking garage into a drive-through emergency room.

This sounds completely stupid and insane. And then you think about it a little more and it is not so crazy. The thinking is that this might not only be efficient and convenient but also a good way to treat way to treat a large number of patients during any communicable disease outbreak. The Swine Flu debacle apparently has doctors thinking of more creative ways to treat infectious diseases and maybe a drive-thru ER would prove effective for some other conditions as well.

The Maryland Court of Appeals changed an illogical quirk in Maryland law on Friday, finding that doctors must inform patients not only of the risks of treatment but also the potential consequences of forgoing a medical procedure.

The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog has a complete summary of this medical malpractice case here.

Two Texas nurses have been charged criminally with reporting a doctor to the Texas Medical Board.

I'll bet you $10 the charges are dropped once the Winkler County District Attorney wakes up. (Is this an elected post?) But the chilling effect that will flow all the way to Maryland will be nurses taking the path of least resistance and allowing doctors to go unchallenged will be a legacy of this case.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has overturned both the trial court and an intermediate appeals court, reversing one of the largest medical malpractice suit verdicts in New Jersey, a whopping $75,967,140 (which the trial court had reduced to $70,891,781.59).

The facts of this case, regardless of whether medical malpractice was the cause, are far beyond awful. A four month-old boy suffered brain damage when he was deprived of oxygen following surgery in 1998. There was no dispute that the boy suffers from significant intellectual, verbal, and neuron motor deficits and will require substantial, round-the-clock care for the rest of his life, barring some incredible new technology. The boy also sustained a hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, which is a brain injury that results in cortical blindness.

In addition to what had to be incredible sympathy for the child (any human being would), the jury also had to be put off by the emergency room doctors defense. The doctor first argued that the injury occurred prior to her arrival in the PICU. But that claim was rebutted by reconstruction of the timeline that largely was undercut by the discovery of the cardiac monitoring strips that were produced by the defendants' medical malpractice lawyers (not the ER's doc's malpractice lawyer) two weeks into the trial. Incredible, right?

So the judge declares a mistrial. The doctor then switched gears, arguing that she never have should have been called to the PICU because she was not qualified to assist there and, oh by the way, I didn't breach the standard of care anyway. I'm not saying that argument can never work. But it is a tough one that obviously failed here.

Continue reading " Medical Malpractice Verdict of $75 Million Reversed " »

Wisconsin has a really dumb medical malpractice law. Non-dependent children or their parents are not allowed to file a medical malpractice lawsuit for a death claim that results from a medical error. There is now a move afoot in the Wisconsin legislature to make for a more fair wrongful death medical malpractice law.

In Maryland, there can be no wrongful death claim because there is no surviving parent or child. In other words, there is no loss for the death of the victim. This is one awful consequence of Maryland’s wrongful death law and should be changed. But Maryland does not go as far as Wisconsin and require dependency, which is abjectly unjust and hopefully will be changed soon.

If you have a a wrongful death medical malpractice claim in Maryland, call our Maryland malpractice lawyers at 800-553-8082 or click here for a free Maryland malpractice consultation.

• Malpractice Law in Maryland (summary of Maryland medical malpractice law)
• Medical Malpractice Overview (Maryland medical malpractice lawyer discussion of malpractice in Maryland

Recently-passed laws in several states, including Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., require hospitals to detail serious injuries; this reveals the frequency and variety of so-called “never events” which should never happen. The laws are different in each state. Virginia's public records identify the hospitals by name, but Maryland and Washington, D.C.'s don't name names.

Five years ago, a Maryland law was passed requiring Maryland hospitals to report errors that led to death and serious harm. This month, the Maryland commission that sets hospital rates is using a new system that ranks hospitals on how often they commit 52 specific mistakes, from preventable obstetrical complications to infections of wounds that develop after surgery. Maryland hospitals that report the most mistakes from that list will be required to bill insurers at a lower reimbursement rate. In other words, good hospitals will make more money.

I think most Maryland malpractice hospital lawyers support this idea. The better hospitals get more money, which motivates them to get better. I worry, though, about any hospital that is last on this list. No real motive for the hospital to get better because they are too far from the higher reimbursement. But the rich Maryland hospitals get richer while the poor hospitals get poorer with no motivation to get better.

Again, I like the idea but there is a potential downside.

I provided my thoughts on Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on Firday on Public Citizen's recent report on medical malpractice and its impact on health care costs. The short answer: not much. But Public Citizen provided one more malpractice statistic that is worth mentioning. In an hour, chances are that five to 11 Americans will die from preventable medical errors by the time you finish. Statistically, it is more likely than not that not a single malpractice payment will be made as a result of any of these deaths that would not have occurred absent medical malpractice.

The notion that most malpractice lawsuits in Maryland are trumped up by medical malpractice lawyers is just plain false. The reality is that, relatively speaking, few meritorious malpractice cases ever see the light of day.

Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed into law a bill making it more difficult to bring medical malpractice lawsuits in the state. Republican supporters of the bill said it will help attract doctors to the state. Opponents argue that the measure threatens the ability of malpractice victims to recover damages for medical negligence.

What this means is that if a jury concludes that you walked into an emergency room and become paralyzed or die as the result of careless emergency room doctor or nurse, the jury may still find the doctor not responsible under Arizona malpractice law. It is just a bad idea that turns hundreds of years of medical malpractice law on its head.

Infections just happen. Or do they? CNN published a story today that questions the "infections happen" defense. Dr. Alfonso Torress-Cook, director of epidemiology and patient safety at Pacific Hospital of Long Beach California, has reduced the infection rate at his hospital to down to 0.01 per 1,000 discharges, 430 times better than the national average. Read that again: 430 times. Incredible.

The doctor's strategy? Don't go after all bacteria, just the dangerous ones. The hospital uses antibiotics sparingly, feed patients yogurt to replenish healthy bacteria in the gut and bathe patients daily, using a soap that maintains the natural pH of the patient's skin, killing only bad bacteria.

A New York Times editorial says that the "current medical liability system, based heavily on litigation, has a spotty record."

I completely agree. The current system - our zillion year old system - for dealing with medical malpractice lawsuits does have a spotty record. You know what would be worse? Every other imaginable system.

It is curious when people attack the system because it "fails to compensate most victims of malpractice because most never file" a lawsuit. There is no way on earth to change this problem but the irony of the malpractice reform supporters pretending to be concerned that there are not enough people getting compensated is more than ridiculous.

Metro Verdicts Monthly reports on a $1,558,039 jury award in a medical malpractice case in Prince George’s County. Plaintiff’s malpractice lawsuit alleged median nerve damage as the result of medical malpractice. Specifically, Plaintiff alleged the doctor negligently performed the carpal tunnel surgery, resulting in permanent damage to the median nerve.

The jury agreed, awarding $ 1,500,000 for non-economic damages, $ 11,251 for past medicals bills; and $ 46,788 for future medicals bills. The verdict was reduced to $ 693,039 due to the Maryland cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.

The moral of the story in this case for the medical malpractice lawyer in Maryland is that you have to look at the entire case. Many lawyers would have simply stopped at $11,251 in medical bills. The malpractice lawyer in this case kept looking further and, as a result, the Plaintiff got a good verdict – the best verdict she could have gotten in a Maryland medical malpractice case.

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