A Salisbury cardiologist has been indicted in federal court on charges stemming from the doctor's giving patients unnecessary stents. Many patients have already filed civil lawsuits in Salisbury claiming medical malpractice for the unnecessary stents.
The debacle at St. Joe's has caused a fresh look into every doctor who has been putting in stents by the bushel load. What we are seeing in many cases is not a pretty picture.
The West Virginia Record has an article on a nursing home lawsuit against Manor Care.
The Madison St. Clair Record has an article on a medical malpractice case that is in its sixth day of the second time trying the case. The case alleges failure to diagnose skin cancer.
Interestingly, the first case ended in a mistrial after a defense verdict when it was discovered that a juror lied about his role in two pending personal injury lawsuits. Usually when the issue of jury honesty in voir dire is raised, it is almost invariably the defendant after a plaintiff's verdict.
The article also provides some highlights from this medical malpractice trial including this one: "So, you think there are some situations where the doctor can play Russian roulette with the revolver?" As you can imagine, this one drew an objection.
A jury in southwest Rhode Island returned a verdict of almost $1 million against the chief of surgery at South County Hospital in Washington County after a long 10 day trial.
The gist of the lawsuit was the care and treatment rendered in - of all things - a big toe surgery.
Plaintiff's malpractice attorney won with the jury not only on negligence but on confirmed consent which is frequently a tough hill to climb.
Notwithstanding this verdict, the defendant may well be a fine doctor. But it is really weird to me that a podiatrist would become the chief of surgery. It is late, I'm tired, I keep going back to make sure I'm reading that right. Yep, I am. I've had issues raised as to whether a podiatrist is even qualified to testify in cases where the surgery was performed by an orthopedist.
The Baltimore Sun has an opinion piece about Maryland hospitals' refusal to do what most businesses are doing in 2010: cutting costs.
Hospitals for both the better and for the worse, do not generally attract the entrepreneurial type. This is often a good thing. The majority of health care workers in a hospital setting are focused on healing patients. That's where their heads ought to be. So I think it is difficult to just expect them to fall in line with the rest of the market. Hospital administrators need to look to try to fight this inertia by making sure hospitals are grabbing the low hanging fruit that can reduct costs. But, realistically, there is only so much that can be done without more investment (financial and psychological) in technology.
A Florida appeals court gave an interesting ruling in Kristensen-Kepler v. Cooney on the question of whether there was potential liability against an ambulatory surgical center.
Plaintiff's wrongful death claim was that the ambulatory surgical center's anesthesiologist negligently caused an infection in decedent's spine. The court found that the surgery center was not directly the patient's injuries and death because the patient did not choose the surgical center as the site of his surgery. Instead, the patient chose the doctor who directed the patient to the surgical center.
You can read the full opinion here.
The Maryland Daily Record has an article today on a defense verdict in a claim against Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Hartford County. The claim was not against a doctor but the nursing staff.
From reading the article, it sounds like a tough case in a difficult jurisdiction.
The Maryland Daily Record has an article on the Jeff Peek's victory in federal court in a medical malpractice lawsuit against a Medical Mutual insured doctor. Med Mutual made no offer in the case.
This Wisconsin opinion barring Plaintiff's claim on the statute of limitations underscores a pretty obvious point: it is virtually impossible to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit unless you are a medical malpractice lawyer. There are just too many hoops to jump through that you can't anticipate. This is obvious when it comes to pro se plaintiffs but so many lawyers who have never handled a malpractice claim get what appears to be a good malpractice case and they quickly learn that they cannot handle the case on their own.
Plaintiff filed an interesting appeal in an Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit that ended in a defense verdict. Plaintiff argued that information regarding the defendant doctor and the defendant doctor's expert's service in Iraq was unduly prejudicial. Specifically, Plaintiff took exception to testimony regarding (1) [Defendant doctor's deployment to the Iraq war that was after the alleged malpractice occurred and; (2) reference to the doctor's military service improperly influenced the jury by invoking "strong views of patriotism for our troops."
The standard in Illinois, as in Maryland, is abuse of discretion. This is always going to be a dead bang loser. Sure, it helps defendants to wrap themselves around the flag a bit in defending their case. But background context is going to be admitted by most judges and, either way, their ruling is not going to be disturbed on appeal.
The Illinois intermediate court that heard this appeal agreed with me. You can read the opinion here.
Three Circuit Court judges came out of the Prince George's County Judicial Nominating Commission last week for the vacancy created by retirement of Maryland Court of Special Appeals Judge James P. Salmon:
Judge Toni Evon Clarke
Judge Melanie Marva Shaw Geter
Judge Michele Denise Hotten
No word on when Governor O'Malley will make a selection.
Georgia has rethought its cap on caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. Will Maryland follow suit? I think it is unlikely but as the Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog points out, the Maryland high court will get another look at this issue next month in DRD Pool Service, Inc. v. Freed. That case has a constitutional challenge to the non-economic damages cap in non-medical malpractice cases. I'm not optimistic but I'm hopeful.
Looking to build on the momentum in Illinois, Kansas malpractice lawyers look to strike down Kansas' draconian $250,000 noneconomic damages malpractice cap.
The case is a classic wrong part surgery lawsuit:, a woman went in for right ovary surgery and had her left ovary removed. This is one of those cases malpractice lawsuit reform advocates do not have an answer for: the doctor may a surgical error that even a modicum of due care would have avoided.
Not surprisingly under these facts, the woman filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the surgeon who operated on the wrong part of her ovaries and was awarded $760,000 in damages. But, consistent with the cap, the trial judge reduced relating to noneconomic damages.
A man in Tampa Bay has filed a lawsuit against a hospital that told him it would charge him more than $1 million to pull their adverse incident reports on his back surgeon. One goal of the Plaintiff: finding out just how much it would actually cost the doctor to do the search.
In 2010, people are getting used to the information age. They no longer feel comfortable being left in the dark on issues that are important to them, particularly information a patient would want to know. Do hospitals try to put a big price tag on information to deter patients from obtaining information on their doctors? I'm sure some do. But 10 years from now, covering up this kind of information claiming the search is too time consuming is going to be a dead bang loser. It may even be already.
No word yet in either Maryland and Illinois on various challenges to medical malpractice caps both states. The Illinois case was on the list of cases to be decided last week but was withdraw so no ruling will be made in 2009. The Maryland high court will likely not rule until 2010 either.
The Illinois ruling is sexier than Maryland because (1) it is a larger state, and (2) it goes to the core of the cap: is it a violation of the state's constitution. But it is huge deal to medical malpractice victims in Maryland.
Fun random why the Illinois cap is wrong: Rod Blagojevich signed it into law. Ispo facto.
Maryland is not the only case with upcoming battles and decisions to make about its medical malpractice cap. Missouri Lawyers Weekly reports that a St. Louis judge reduced a $6.8 million medical malpractice verdict to $1.28 million in a case Plaintiff is expected to appeal. This was an awful case involving the death of a three year-old boy.
The Plaintiff's malpractice lawyer's angle in this case is interesting. Plaintiff claims that when Missouri imposed its new cap on malpractice pain and suffering damages, it repealed the old law. Therefore, cases arising under the old cap no longer have a cap and the court should award the boy's family the full $6.8 million.
This is a tough argument. In Maryland, there is a far more cogent argument that the legislature repeal the cap in cases where arbitration is waived in Semsker v. Lockshin, a case the Maryland Court of Appeals is considering now.
The New York Times offers the opinion in its "The Ethicist" column that it is perfectly okay for doctors to refuse to treat medical malpractice lawyers. Taking it a step further, the author actually encourages the practice.
The logic of this completely escapes me. Does this doctor believe that it is ethically wrong for a lawyer to handle a medical malpractice case? I'm a lawyer. Some lawyers focus their practice exclusively on legal malpractice cases. It would never even occur to me to have ill feelings towards a legal malpractice lawyer.
Maryland publishes disciplinary actions taken against health-care practitioners. I recently found out that one of the doctors treating one of our clients has was no longer licensed to practice medicine on this website. The American Medical Association frowns upon this type of public exposure and has done a good job of keeping the national database of malpractice payouts closed to the general public.
This database, complied by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, almost a half a million malpractice lawsuits whose judgments total nearly $70 billion. Shouldn't patients have access to this information in choosing a doctor?.
When the Saturday Night Live's opening skit started talking about medical malpractice and health care reform (around the 2:00 mark), I was worried what was coming next. But it underscores the silliness of malpractice caps, albeit in a very coarse way:
