Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

Suit was recently filed in the Superior Court in Hartford, Connecticut, alleging that a pediatrician failed to diagnose bacterial meningitis, leading the loss of a young boy's eyesight.

The details here are so sad. The lawsuit claims that the doctor dismissed the boy's severe headache, instead of sending him to the emergency room where a spinal tap would have been done and the meningitis would have been diagnosed. Tragically, the boy fell into a month-long coma, suffering severe brain damage along with the blindness, the suit claims.

These kinds of failure to diagnose claims are so sad because the illness could have been so easily prevented had the proper diagnostic tests been done. Instead, the boy's complaints were disregarded and quickly brushed off. Too often, the severity of injury in meningitis cases is the result of medical malpractice. These claims usually involve an infection from a delay in diagnosis or failure to properly treat the meningitis to stop the infection. Too many doctors chalk up meningitis as simply a headache or a simple fever. Misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis of bacterial meningitis is of great concern as early diagnosis of bacterial meningitis and treatment is key to prevent permanent damage such as brain damage, hearing loss, seizures, intracranial pressure, decreased intelligence, kidney damage, amputation, or death.

If you are or a loved one is a victim of medical malpractice, contact our team of lawyers to discuss your case. If you have any questions for our Maryland malpractice attorneys, you can reach us at 800-553-8082 or get a free, on-line no obligation medical misdiagnosis consultation.

The Pop Tort rages about the certificate of merit requirement that many states have in medical malpractice cases, citing a particularly onerous Connecticut merit requirement. The Pop Tort cites a news article of an awful injustice done to a woman who had her medical malpractice lawsuit dismissed.

After a long ride to the end of the article, we find out what the grave injustice was. The plaintiff sued her doctors for alleged breach of contract and infliction of emotional distress — not malpractice - and the court decided she need a certificate of merit.

Personally, I'm fine with this. I think certificates of merit are actually a good thing. There is a knee jerk reaction: the certificate of merit makes it hard for plaintiffs and their lawyers to bring lawsuits. But not all things that are made harder are bad thing. I know that there are some meritorious cases that don't make the cut because discovery is needed to get the information for the cerftificate of merit in the first place. But good lawyering can find a way around that problem, at least in Maryland.

The upside for medical malpractice victims is that there are less cases filed by a pro se plaintiff who is just mad at their doctor and does not have real evidence that could ever support a verdict. In states where there is no certificate of merit, the local paper with nothing else to write about always fires out a story about the poor doctor who got hit with a frivolous lawsuit. The absence of these stories provides an indirect but meaningful benefit to malpractice plaintiffs: less polluted juries and less stupid, irrelevant anecdotes to march in front of the Maryland General Assembly.

Please note: I could be completely wrong about this. Maybe certificate of merits keep out too many good cases than the PR upshot we get. But I think I'm right and I think the knee jerk "if it is hard for plaintiffs, it must be bad" colors the opinion of plaintiffs' lawyers more often than it should.

• Sample certificate of merit
• An overview of the certificate of merit requirement
• The application of the 20% rule

• "Tort reform" has nothing to do with insurance rates.
• Can statutory caps actually hurt defendants?
• Kennerly's got an interesting post about problems with anesthesia.
• The decline in number of autopsies performed could mean we're missing big mistakes on the part of hospitals.
• A member of the state's committee to address unnecessary stents has now himself been accused of placing unnecessary stents.

• The family of a man who died at Massachusetts General Hospital has settled its case against the hospital for $850,000. The man died after nurses failed to respond to alarms on his cardiac monitor. This death has shed national attention on the dangers of “alarm fatigue’’ among hospital staff.
• A few New York courts are taking a new approach to handling the 4,000 medical malpractice suits filed each year. The approach...settling cases early. The pilot program will be using a $3 million grant to train more judges in medical issues, and has been shown to cut court backlogs and save money, while also proving to be a cost savings to hospitals and directly impacting the indemnity insurance of doctors. One of the new rules approved for the medical malpractice cases, in order to expedite things - scheduling Settlement Conferences 45 days after court papers are filed.
• The Tennessee Court of Appeals issued an opinion on its relatively new certificate of merit rule in Crawford v. Kavanaugh. Maryland has a similar rule and this opinion is a cautionary tale for both Tennessee and Maryland malpractice lawyers. The lesson: don't take a malpractice case unless you know how to handle it.
• It is being said that confidential settlements make it harder for future plaintiffs to get evidence and information they need to bring out all of the facts about the defendant's conduct. I agree, there is little doubt that confidential settlements make it harder for the next plaintiff, as well as making the insurance less accountable. But, the problem is that people who have been badly injured have a hard time focusing on the global interests of plaintiffs everywhere when they are fighting and scrapping to be compensated for their own injuries.
• Some experts are predicting that the increasing numbers of physicians using electronic health record systems (EHR) may trigger an increase in medical malpractice lawsuits. Regardless of the concern, the federal government is pushing physicians to implement and use EHR systems, as required under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and are directing hospitals to implement the EHRs by 2012.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals issued an opinion on its relatively new certificate of merit rule in Crawford v. Kavanaugh. Maryland has a similar rule and this opinion is a cautionary tale for both Tennessee and Maryland malpractice lawyers. The lesson: don't take a malpractice case unless you know how to handle it.

In Crawford, the defendant doctor performed a cystoscopy, retrograde pyelogram, and a brush biopsy on a woman's ureter. The purpose of this procedure is typically to diagnose transitional cell carcinoma, a cancer of the urinary system. The doctor believed the woman had atypical urothelial cells. To combat this, the doctor performed a uretectomy and ureteroneocystostomy. The woman had an infection and other complications. Another doctor treating the woman noticed she had a bowel obstruction. The woman had to undergo another surgery.

Clearly, this is an awful thing in human terms but not a major injury in the medical malpractice milieu. The woman needed “many additional weeks” in the hospital and “many months of recuperation and rehabilitation.” Again, I don't want to minimize her suffering. This is a tragedy if it happens to someone I care about. But that does not mean it is a good malpractice case. What is my point? This is the kind of case taken by maybe an otherwise good lawyer who does not regularly handle malpractice cases. Typically, experienced malpractice lawyers don't take a case like this and won't make these mistakes.

Continue reading "Details Matter in Filing Malpractice Case: New Appellate Opinion" »

• There are already major safety issues with medical devices, so what do the venture capitalists who invest in device companies want to do? Make it easier to get devices approved.
• The Delaware Supreme Court holds that a referring physician is not liable for malpractice committed by the doctor to whom he or she refers a patient.
• Here's a point in the case for choosing a female doctor.
• Rick Perry's medical malpractice "reform" in Texas did not solve the state's serious shortage of doctors in some areas.
• A federal judge in Illinois is letting a man proceed with his claim against emergency responders who forced "care" upon him after he refused medical treatment. His suit claims that paramedics "put their patient in a headlock, rammed his head 20 times into an ambulance wall and taped him up 'like a mummy.'"
• "A $9 million medical malpractice verdict in the case of an oil-field worker with a broken neck is thought to be the largest in Wyoming history."

Do electronic records decrease malpractice?

Electronic medical records are all the rage. The potential benefits are not hard to see. Doctors can access a patient's entire medical history from one chart. Allergic reaction to penacilin in 2003? Got it. Equally helpful, the system has built-in alerts of the potential dangers of drugs interactions.

It is a bipartisan idea in Washington, D.C., a town where bipartisan ideas are as common as Indianapolis Colts wins without Peyton Manning. President George Bush first championed Health Information Technology as a national priority for the U.S. in 2004. President Obama then threw $36 billion in stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) – earmarked to facilitate implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) – just what the doctor ordered to speed things up. Since then, the EHR implementation machine has churned away in an effort to improve efficiency in patient care. By broadening access to patient information, creating a consistent system for reminders and alerts, offering important safety features such as clinical decision-making support, and automating prescription filling and re-filling, EHRs have the potential to change the landscape of medicine in the U.S. and across the world.

In addition to their direct patient and physician benefits, EMRs are also touted as a means of reducing medical malpractice claims against doctors. Recently, however, a number of malpractice claims have been filed against providers using EHRs; claims directly and indirectly related to the use of EHRs in patient care. Either medical malpractice lawyers will sue over just about anyone or there is real cause for concern that we all should be thinking about. I suspect it is the latter. Medical malpractice insurers apparently agree and are considering increasing medical malpractice insurance premiums in order to offset the potential risks associated with the use of EHRs.

Continue reading "Do Electronic Records Lead to More Medical Malpractice?" »

Stunning malpractice claims

You suffer an injury and need surgery. You have to rely on your surgeon to play it straight with you. Besides a second opinion, never a bad idea, what else can you do? Far down on your list of fears: not getting the surgery the doctor tells you that you are getting.

But, in massive numbers, that seems to have happened in New York. There are currently dozens of new lawsuits, alleging medical malpractice, pending against a New York based orthopedic surgeon, with about another 100 cases being discussed.

Ten of the current lawsuits filed allege that the doctor performed surgery, but intentionally did not treat, or improperly treated, his patients' injuries. While those complaints stem from a surgery performed, there are yet other complaints that allege a surgery was never performed. In one particular case, a patient went to the surgeon because of shoulder problems. A "shoulder reconstruction" was performed, but when the patient's pain and problems continued, she sought a second opinion from another doctor. After a battery of x-rays, it was determined that there was no evidence whatsoever that the surgeon performed a shoulder reconstruction, such as screws, anchors, or a fixation device. That patient further claims that the doctor injured her nerves during the surgery, and as a result, she now has permanent hand numbness, and problems grasping things.

Continue reading "Orthopedic Surgeon Faces a Possible 100 Malpractice Cases" »

The strict locality rule requires doctors to apply the standard of care specific to the community in which the medical care was given. This doctrine began after the Civil War where courts where loathe to apply the same standards to country doctors as they would to urban doctors that have access to the latest information.

Whatever may have justified the strict locality rule a hundred and forty years ago, that justification perished even before Al Gore invented the Internet. No lawyer would argue to a jury that medical standards change based on the community where the medical service is delivered. Still, doctors' medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland have long claimed that the locality rule is codified by the Maryland Health Care Malpractice Claims Act. Thankfully, this notion was dispelled last month by a Maryland District Court judge.

• Malpractice lawyers: if you give your medical malpractice client the job of finding a doctor to serve as an expert witness in her case, then basically sit back and do nothing while the statute of limitations runs out, you will probably be called out by the state bar.
• DC Medical Malpractice and Patient Safety Blog writes about ProPublica's "effort to shine a cleansing light into the murky closets of Big Pharma."
• A British woman is suing her dentist for malpractice. He took out the wrong tooth, and then, when she realized it and told him, he took the tooth out of the trash, where it was sitting next to all sorts of medical waste, and re-implanted it.
• A federal jury in Pennsylvania has awarded an ex-Marine $17.5 million. The man had dental surgery at a VA Hospital, during which his blood pressure dropped sharply several times. The doctor did not stop the procedure, though, and the patient suffered a stroke while driving home, crashing his car and leading to brain damage.
• A Pennsylvania woman has been awarded $23 million in a case where a heath-care aide did not report a contaminated catheter, which led to an infection that necessitated a double leg amputation.
• A Florida jury awarded $4.5 million in a wrongful-birth suit to the parents of a child born with no arms and one leg. These things happen with and without negligence. It is just so sad when something like this can be so easily avoided.

How Much Does the Public Have a Right to Know About Their Doctor's Malpractice History?

The National Practitioner Data Bank (for short: NPDB) is an electronic repository containing doctors' malpractice settlements and judgments that the feds have maintained for 15 years. It also includes adverse peer review actions against licenses, clinical privileges, and professional society memberships of physicians and other health care providers and Medicare and Medicaid exclusion reports of sanctions against doctors for fraudulent billing.

This database - while not as complete as it should be - has been a huge weapon on both sides of the malpractice debate to separate fact from fiction. Federal law dictates that all medical liability payments and certain adverse actions must be reported. The NPDB makes some of this information available to hospitals, state licensure boards, some professional societies, and other health care entities under certain prescribed circumstances.

The public also had access to the database until this month when the government shutdown public access to this data. The public never had unfettered access but the NPDB has long been providing access to its reports with the names of the doctors, patients and hospitals redacted.

What happened? Newspapers were using the NPDB to connect the dots to figure out the names of the parties - mostly hospitals and frequent flyer malpractice doctors. Local newspapers do a number of "Can you believe this doctor had 9 nine malpractice cases against him while he was treating y'all?" stories a month.

Continue reading "National Practitioner Data Bank: New Secrecy Rules" »

Unless you are in the health care profession or dealing with the health care profession, it is hard to appreciate the deference given to medical records. Doctors believe - correctly in most cases - that looking at a patient's medical records can tell you exactly what should come next in the care and treatment of that patient.

In spite of this, the Indiana Supreme Court wants to impose liability on doctors and hospitals for losing medical records, rejecting the idea of a medical malpractice claimants' tort for losing the records themselves.

This opinion was the result of a medical malpractice claim filed by a woman who had complications after her son's emergency cesarean birth in 1999. The Plaintiff brought a separate damages claim against the hospital for losing the records which made it difficult to bring a birth injury claim against her obstetrician.

Continue reading "Penalty for Destroying Medical Records in Maryland and Indiana?" »

• A doctor who cut off part of a patient's cancer-ridden penis while the patient was under anesthesia for a circumcision has prevailed in the medical malpractice suit against him. Link via the always-provocative Legal Blog Watch.
• An Ohio assisted living home has to pay $1.93 million to the family of a woman who eventually died after the home administered medicine for a disease she didn't have.
• A California lawyer is fighting that state's medical malpractice cap.
• Check out this illustrated guide to hospital hazards. It's frightening and maddening.
• "When Does a Reasonable Person Suspect Medical Malpractice?"
• Kansas Star: "Maribeth Chase didn’t know that the neurosurgeon who would be operating on her had been sued at least 16 times for allegedly making medical mistakes."

A doctor whose wife was tragically disfigured in an operating room fire has issued a press release and - incredibly - a television ad protesting North Carolina Senate Bill 33, which limits the caps on pain and suffering regardless of whether they resulted in disfigurement, mutilation, loss of limb, paralysis, pain, suffering, blindness or death.

In the ad, the doctor explains how his wife had gone in for a simple, outpatient procedure when a fire broke out in the operating room, causing severe disfigurement.

The crux of the doctor's contention: “No one can put a ‘cap' on my wife's pain and disfigurement—so how can the legislature put a cap on what it's worth? … Why do you think it's fairer for legislators to decide, rather than juries?”

The proposed North Carolina cap is draconian, criminally capping damages or disfigurement, mutilation, loss of limb, paralysis, pain, suffering and death at $250,000.

Peninsula Regional Medical Center will settle a number of unnecessary stent cases for $1.8. million, the U.S. Department of Justice announced last week.

Besides the unnecessary stents, Peninsula was also accused of failing to follow up on complaints by its own employees in the hospital's cardiac catheterization laboratory about the "medically unnecessary nature of the procedures" by a cardiologist who has since been convicted of health care fraud.

I think St. Joe got the ball rolling on what is going to be the discovery of hundreds of schemes around the country to implant stents in patients who simply did not need a stent procedure in the first place.

Baltimore Washington Medical Center must pay a fine after giving a patient an improper dose of radiation last year. The Glen Burnie hospital was fined by the Maryland Department of Environment which, surprisingly, enforces radiation management regulations.

BWMC recently reached the $14,000 settlement agreement with the state for the improper dose of radiation. The patient was notified of the error, and officials also told the state about it through the required self-reporting system.

Good for Baltimore Washington Medical Center for confessing to the error. But this fine also underscores how important it is for state regulators to be on top of these types of infractions. No medical malpractice lawyer in Maryland is going to take the injured victim's claim: it is just too small. Someone needs to stand up for people who suffered through this type of thing because they represent so many more that we (and maybe even they) never know about.

Baltimore Washington Medical Center is like a lot of hospitals: most of the doctors there are doing unbelievably good work but there is a minority of doctors and nurses who are committing malpractice by the bushel load. The key is to figure out who is who.

• "Angioplasty and stents may do more harm than good."
• An article in the New York Times magazine, written by a doctor, says addressing the issue of tired and overworked your physicians does not reduce medical errors HT: Overlawyered.
• A new study says state medical boards are not doing such a great job protecting consumers from bad doctors.
• A Pennsylvania woman has been awarded more than $2.2 million in her suit against the nursing home she said gave her late father poor care.
• Victims of North Carolina's old "eugenics board"--can you believe such a thing existed in the U.S.--are seeking compensation for forced sterilizations.
• A Florida abortion doctor slapped with a $36 million malpractice verdict will not get a new trial. His case involved a woman who came to him for an abortion and, because of what a jury said last month was malpractice, ended up giving birth to a severely disabled girl.

• Kennerly argues that most med mal suits stem not from a mistake in judgment but from a lack of diligence.


• Kaiser Health is suing a hospital chain for allegedly intentionally driving up patient care prices by keeping patients longer than needed.


• A woman is suing a hospital and doctor for allegedly faxing her private medical documents to a machine shared by several of her coworkers.


• "As hospitals across the country are under growing pressure to reduce medical mistakes, the Hazard Alerting Loop system is designed to catch “near misses” before they turn into serious hazards."


• A radiology practice successfully sued for malpractice will have to pay interest on the judgment.


• Ew. And yikes.


• Here's a funny take on the federal medical malpractice "reform" bill.

• Several patients of a New Mexico cardiac surgeon are suing him, alleging that he faked diagnoses and then implanted unnecessary pacemakers. Unnecessary cardiac surgery is becoming the new big thing. Maryland's claim to fame: the unraveling may have started with us.
• "A decision to let a nearly $1.7 million medical malpractice verdict stand against a local hospital came down to five words from the hospital’s lawyer at the end of trial: 'Okay. Alright. Thank you.'" This was a 3-2 decision. On jury polling. Seriously? Has a civil case ever flipped on jury polling? Goodness, this is deep in the form over substance textbook.
• The Pop Tort weighs in on federal medical malpractice legislation.
• A D.C. medical malpractice lawyer writes about his fight to get his client the money she won in court.
• You're not supposed to raid your state's med-mal compensation fund to help balance the budget. Then again, why do these guys have so much extra money lying around in their malpractice fund?

• Mark Midei is no longer licensed to practice medicine in Maryland.
• A new study shows that doctors follow evidence-based guidelines only slightly more than half the time.
• Can you bill your doctor for the three hours you spent in the waiting room?
• Can that surgery wait until July is over?
• As many as 15,000 patients a year get unnecessary angioplasty, a new study says.
• An upstate New York jury has awarded a brain-injured woman and her husband $34 million in their suit against a hospital, doctor, and nurse for causing her to go into a coma by infusing her too quickly with saline solution.

• Maryland Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog writes about whether you are more likely to be a victim of medical malpractice in the doctor's office or at the hospital.