Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

The number of Pennsylvania malpractice lawsuits dropped for the sixth - please think about that for a second: sixth - consecutive year in 2010. The total number of malpractice lawsuits crashed from 2904 in 2002 to 1,491 last year.

Of the malpractice cases that did go to a jury last year in Pennsylvania, doctors, hospitals and health care providers won 82% of the time (33 of 163).

Hysterically, the tone deaf Hospital & Health System Association of Pennsylvania took the moment to point out that additional reforms are needed. Really? Hire a PR department or something, guys. It is such a credibility killer.

Back in 2004, doctors’ fervor for caps in medical malpractice cases reached a new high. My theory is that Medical Mutual (easily the largest medical malpractice insurer in Maryland, covering about 75% of Maryland doctors) engaged in a little creative accounting and timely settlement negotiations that allowed Medical Mutual to create crisis. So the Maryland legislature jumped and modified the law to give doctors special protections and decreased the cap for doctors in a way that really changed the value of medical malpractice wrongful death cases in Maryland. About 10 minutes later, Medical Mutual reported a $68.6 million malpractice premium surplus. I really don't think the legislature realizes now that Maryland malpractice insurance companies are the little boy who cried wolf. (Admittedly, a lot of special interests fall in to that group.)

I always like to point out that you don't see lawyers trying to get lawyer specific dispensation to lower malpractice premiums for lawyers. I don't like paying malpractice premiums but, unlike many doctors, I'm not suggesting special consideration. I think it is crazy doctors want a special execptions - lawyers would never ask for such a thing.

Oops. Scratch that. I'll take that arrow of supreiority out of my quiver. A New Jersey State Bar is pushing its state legislature to reduce the statute of limitations in malpractice actions against licensed professionals, which includes, of course, lawyers.

• The Pop Tort writes about the war that Florida is declaring on malpractice victims, noting that elections have consequences. Texas agrees.
• The New York Medical Malpractice Blog (Andrew J. Barovick) writes about how AARP is against malpractice caps in New York. Which makes sense since the elderly bear a large brunt of the malpractice burden.
• The Boston Personal Injury Lawyer Blog (Alan H. Crede) writes about how smarter databases could improve health care and help prevent malpractice.
• I don't believe in either extreme when it comes to the impact of our malpractice laws on the federal deficit.
• Insane malpractice reform bill in Montana gets stopped at the governor's door.

This is not a space to praise the virtues of malpractice insurance companies. But let's give credit to Crico/RMF a malpractice insurance company which insures Harvard-affiliated hospitals. Crico/RMF, according to the Wall Street Journal, put on an emergency medicine leadership summit to identify the critical factors that cause missed or delayed diagnoses of patients in the emergency room.

How did they do this? They looked at settled malpractice lawsuits and tried to breakdown what went wrong. They found that doctor-nurse communication breakdowns often happen at a critical juncture in a patient's treatment. From this, they put together a list of best practices that hospitals can use to prevent misdiagnosis.

Continue reading " Diagnosing the Emergency Room Misdiagnosis Problem " »

A new study in the American Journal of Infection Control found that 15% of our nursing homes received poor marks for controlling infection.

Things are a little dirty. Okay. So what? The "so what?" answer makes you do a double take: infections kill 400,000 nursing home residents each year.

It is important to make clear that due diligence from the nursing home would not have changed the outcome for the vast majority of these people. Still. That is an incredible stat. The Internet provides so much great information but one of the great downsides is statistics are more meaningless than ever, even good statistics. If an unassailable study came out that said kids who have first names starting with the letter "S" scored 200 points higher on the SATs, people would start naming their kids Sarah and Steve for a few weeks and then everyone would forget about it.

The study concluded that this is a problem that causes real human suffering, finding a strong correlation between low staffing levels at these nursing homes and the receipt of an infection control deficiency citation. Trying to run a nursing home on the cheap, then, is correlated with a higher infection risk.

Of course, this statistic is one that nursing home lawyers representing nursing homes can pull out to defend infection lawsuits. "Sure the woman got an infection. But 400,000 nursing home residents die from infections every year."

There is some truth to this argument. But it is also true that some portion - a portion that is just too high - of this 400,000 died as the result of nursing homes that did not properly focus on the need to keep their living facility clean.

The Baltimore County Department of Aging has put out a nice summary of the Maryland COMAR regulations covering nursing homes. COMAR is the official compilation of all administrative regulations issued by Maryland state agencies.

If you think you have been a victim of nursing home medical malpractice in Maryland, call 800-553-8082 or get a free online consultation.