Miami Injury Lawyer Blawg

Florida Medical Malpractice Claims are subject to a cap on damages. Republican's, like Rick Santorum favor caps on damages, so long as they do not effect him or his family.

In the ultimate act of hypocrisy, Rick Santorum follows the Republican mantra that he will push to limit payments to victims in medical malpractice lawsuits, which he of course blames for unnecessarily driving up health-care costs. However, what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. When Rick Santorum's wife, Karen Santorum filed a Medical Malpractice lawsuit, Santorum testified in support of his wife who sought $500,000, twice the cap in his 1994 legislative proposal.

Karen Santorum claimed that David Dolberg, a chiropractor, performed a spinal ma­nipu­la­tion, that caused a herniated disk in her spine, which was surgically removed a week later. Santorum claimed she was left with a permanent back injury that would result in a lifetime of pain medication and restricted mobility.

Of course, the Santorums sought to seal the records in the lawsuit against Dolberg and the center where he worked, saying her husband's role as a senator would draw attention to the case and violate his wife's privacy. The court declined to do so.

As reported in The Washington Post, the Santorums both testified to the non-economic losses she and their family suffered. Santorum told the Fairfax County Circuit Court jury that his wife wasn't able to do some of the tasks she enjoyed as a mother. He said the pain made her unable to exercise and stay fit, and now she "does not have the confidence" to help him with public events on his campaigns.

"We have to go out and do a lot of public things," Rick Santorum said. "She wants to look nice, so it's really difficult."

For the ultimate slap in the fact, Rick Santorum told reporters that he thought the $250,000 cap on malpractice awards in his 1994 legislative proposal might be too low, given the injury his wife had suffered.

Like all Medical Malpractice Lawyers, Karen Santorum's attorney, Heather Heidelbaugh, stressed to the jury that her client suffered "severe and permanent neurologic damage" and this trial was "their only opportunity for justice." The jury wouldn't be around, she said, "10 years from now, when she is 49 years old and can't get out of bed . . . can't play with her sons."

The court returned a verdict of $350,000, which was reduced to $175,000.

Santorum, whose wife has been at his side often as he has campaigned for president over the past year, said in the fall that he was generally in favor of a cap on awarding money for pain and suffering, fearing that juries could be swayed by sympathy and award excess amounts for intangible, non-economic damages. In 2003, he proposed capping pain and suffering awards at $250,000 and allowing larger awards when more than one doctor or medical facility is involved in a malpractice case.

Continue reading "Rick Santorum Favors Caps On Medical Malpractice Damages-But Not For His Family" »

Shaniah Rolle, was the victim of Medical Malpractice when she received an expired vaccine that led to the amputation of her arms and legs.

This unfortunate incident dates back to 1998, when Shaniah's mother, Queen Seriah Azulla Dabrio, took Shaniah to the Unviversity of Miami's medical school's pediatric unit for a checkup. Shaniah had her spleen removed when she was a newborn, and as a result a medical assistant injected Shaniah with a special vaccination designed to protect against infection for people without spleens. Unfortunately, the vaccine had expired five months earlier.

Eight months after receiving the injection Shaniah became seriously ill and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. She had a bacterial infection throughout her body that caused blood clots to form in her arms and legs. The infection led to gangrene in her limbs, and doctors amputated her arms and legs above the joints.

Incredibly enough the lawsuit was filed 10 years ago, and The University of Miami denied responsibility even though the expired vaccine led to the very infection it was to protect against

UM's attorneys, Christopher Knight of Miami and John Hall of Atlanta, argued that Shaniah would have contracted her illness despite being given the expired vaccine because her mother failed to give Shaniah enough medication to help stave off the infection.

The Miami-Dade jury returned a $12.6 Million verdict against the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. However, the amount Shaniah will receive will be cut almost in half because jurors deemed her mother was 40 percent at fault.

Continue reading "$12.6 Million Medical Malpractice Jury Verdict For Teen" »

Strokes, and the failure to timely recognize, diagnose and treat are on the rise. Approximately 795,000 people suffer a stroke each year in the United States. More than half of those affected will suffer from arm paralysis, which is the inability of a muscle or group of muscles to move voluntarily. When messages from the brain to the muscles don't work properly due to a stroke, a limb becomes paralyzed or develops a condition called spasticity.

As a Stroke Malpractice Lawyer I have witnessed too many individuals suffer with permanent injuries following a stroke. To that end, stroke is the leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the United States.

As reported by the Chicago News Cooperative, Dr. Julius Dewald is trying to meld medicine, science and engineering in a path-breaking way to better understand such impairment and how robotic therapy might help people who have had strokes perform the 1,001 little movements we take for granted.

Dr. Dewald is chairman of the department of physical therapy and human movement sciences at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Dewald, and his 25-person team are trying to determine if electromechanical devices can more precisely measure impairment and accelerate what is now a belated, long and expensive rehabilitation.

If the damage is on the left side of the brain, the right arm is affected, and with it the ability to control a joint at a time. Even if patients can move the arm somewhat, they won't have the independent control of joints in the elbow, wrist and fingers.

Over time, the project team hopes the robot can help patients better extend their arm -- not completely, but more than they can now. Then the robot can add weight, making the limb heavier, so the patient can mirror a situation akin to living without the robot.

Continue reading "Robots Help Doctors Treat Stroke Patients" »

The most eggregious cases of Medical Malpractice occur when a Doctor performs an unnecessary medical procedure for money. Unfortunately, these cases are more prevelant
then one cares to imagine.

One case in particular was the subject of a CNBC special.

Dr. Michael Rosin received a 22-year federal prison sentence for defrauding Medicare by performing unnecessary surgeries on elderly patients from the Sarasota area. Rosin also was ordered to pay $48,866 to patients and $3.6 million to the Medicare trust fund. He had to forfeit another $3.7 million to the government.

865 elderly patients went under Rosin's surgical knife, even though biopsy slides seized from his office showed no sign of cancer or were in such poor shape they couldn't be read.
He diagnosed cancer on nearly every patient who came into his office, and almost always removed four layers of skin during surgeries. This, of course, is a statistical anomaly.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Ho said that abuse of the doctor-patient relationship is exactly what makes a long sentence necessary to send a message to the community.

Continue reading "Florida Doctor Who Performed Unnecessary Procedures Sent To Prison" »

The M.R.I. was long thought to be an invaluable diagnostic tool. However, scans are easily misinterpreted and can result in misdiagnoses leading to unnecessary or even harmful treatments. That being said, The M.R.I. is only as good as the person reading the test, and should only be a one part of the final diagnosis. To that end, the doctor's physical examination and the patient's complaints should all be considered in the ultimate diagnosis and recommended treatment options.

As reported by the New York times, Dr. James Andrews, the go-to sports medicine orthopedist wanted to test his suspicion that M.R.I.'s, might be a bit misleading. So he scanned the shoulders of 31 perfectly healthy professional baseball pitchers. As a brief aside, Dr. Andrews signed an exclusive 10-year, $200 million deal with the New York Yankees that will prohibit him from operating on the elbows, shoulders and knees of any athlete not in the Yankee organization.

The pitchers scanned were not injured and had no pain. But the M.R.I.'s found abnormal shoulder cartilage in 90 percent of them and abnormal rotator cuff tendons in 87 percent. "If you want an excuse to operate on a pitcher's throwing shoulder, just get an M.R.I.," Dr. Andrews says. I would argue that Dr. Andrews never performed surgery on a pitcher's throwing shoulder solely on the basis of an MRI study.

He and other eminent sports medicine specialists are taking a stand against what they see as the vast overuse of magnetic resonance imaging in their specialty.

M.R.I.'s can be invaluable in certain situations -- finding serious problems like tumors or helping distinguish between competing diagnoses that fit a patient's history and symptoms. They also can make money for doctors who own their own machines. And they can please sports medicine patients, who often expect a scan.

"It is very rare for an M.R.I. to come back with the words 'normal study,' " said Dr. Christopher DiGiovanni, a professor of orthopedics and a sports medicine specialist at Brown University. "I can't tell you the last time I've seen it."

In sports medicine, where injuries are typically torn muscles or tendons or narrow cracks in bones, specialists like Dr. Andrews and Dr. DiGiovanni say M.R.I.'s often are not needed -- they usually can figure out what is wrong with just a careful medical history, a physical exam and, sometimes, a simple X-ray.

M.R.I.'s are not the only scans that are overused in medicine but, in sports medicine, where many injuries involve soft tissues like muscles and tendons, they rise to the fore.

In fact, one prominent orthopedist, Dr. Sigvard T. Hansen, Jr., a professor of orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington, says he pretty much spurns such scans altogether because they so rarely provide useful information about the patients he sees -- those with injuries to the foot and ankle.

"I see 300 or 400 new patients a year," Dr. Hansen says. "Out of them, there might be one that has something confusing and might need a scan."

The price, which medical facilities are reluctant to reveal, depends on where the scan is done and what is being scanned. One academic medical center charges $1,721 for an M.R.I. of the knee to look for a torn ligament. The doctor who interprets the scan gets $244. Doctors who own their own M.R.I. machines -- and many do -- can pocket both fees. Insurers pay less than the charges -- an average of $150 to the doctor and $960 to the facility.

Steve Ganobcik is something of a poster child for what can go wrong with the scans. A salesman who turns 44 on Saturday, Mr. Ganobcik twisted his knee skiing in Colorado in February. He continued skiing anyway and skied again the next two days as well, not wanting to cut his vacation short.

When he got home to Cleveland, his knee still bothered him, so he saw a sports medicine orthopedist. The doctor immediately ordered an M.R.I. and said it showed a torn anterior cruciate ligament, or A.C.L. It is one of the most common -- and most devastating -- sports injuries. The standard treatment is surgery, with a difficult recuperation lasting six months to a year.

Mr. Ganobcik looked into surgical techniques and decided he wanted a different one than the one his doctor offered. So he saw another sports medicine orthopedist who, agreeing that Mr. Ganobcik's ligament was torn, scheduled the operation.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ganobcik heard that Dr. Freddie H. Fu, chairman of the division of sports medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, had what might be an even better technique, so he went to see him.

To Mr. Ganobcik's surprise, Dr. Fu told him his ligament was not torn after all. His pain was from a fracture in a long bone in the lower leg that the other doctors had also noticed was broken. An M.R.I. at the University of Pittsburgh confirmed it, showing a perfectly normal A.C.L. (Dr. Fu adds that Mr. Ganobcik's original scans had an image that was ambiguous. He wanted a better one, to see if Mr. Ganobcik's ligament had been partly torn and was healing or had never been torn at all. He would not need surgery with a partial tear, but he would need more careful recuperation.)

Dr. Fu's suspicions were raised by Mr. Ganobcik's story. He could never have continued skiing with a torn A.C.L. The diagnosis "made no sense," Dr. Fu said, and that, illustrates a common problem: relying on an M.R.I. instead of a history and an exam, as I noted at the beginning of this story

Continue reading "An M.R.I. is Only One Piece Of The Puzzle" »

Alba Chavez arrived at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center for an outpatient laparoscopic procedure on Dec. 8, 2006. Following the gallbladder surgery Alba Chavez had abdominal pain, and doctors prescribed morphine and hydromorphone. Alba was given the pain medication and left alone when she was transferred between hospital units. Alba stopped breathing and suffered a hypoxic brain injury, which is caused by reduced supply of oxygen to the brain.

Cerebral hypoxia is typically grouped into four categories depending on the severity and location of the brain's oxygen deprivation:

1. Diffuse cerebral hypoxia. A mild to moderate impairment of brain function due to low oxygen levels in the blood.

2. Focal cerebral ischemia; is a stroke occurring in a localized area that can either be acute (sudden onset)and/ or transient (of short duration). This may be due to a variety of medical conditions such as an aneuryrsm which causes a hemorrhagic stroke, or an occlusion occurring in the affected blood vessel/s due to a thrombus (thrombotic stroke) or embolus (embolic stroke). Focal cerebral ischemia constitutes a large majority of the clinical cases in stroke pathology with the infarct usually occurring in the middle cerebral artery (MCA).

3. Global cerebral ischemia. A complete stoppage of blood flow to the brain.

4. Massive Cerebral infarction; is a "stroke", caused by complete oxygen deprivation due to an interference in cerebral blood flow which affects multiple areas of the brain.

Prolonged hypoxia induces neuronal cell death via apoptosis resulting in a hypoxic brain injury.

In the case of Alba Chavez, she went into a coma for 45 days. She did wake up, but she woke up as a quadriplegic. Chavez is confined to a wheelchair and has trouble speaking

The Plaintiff's alleged that hospital nurses should not have left Chavez alone after surgery. As reported by the Daily Business Review, the family claimed the nurses were irresponsible when a heavily drugged Chavez was stripped of monitors and supplemental oxygen for the transfer. The allegation that they were irresponsible-is that they fell below the standard of care. In a Medical Malpractice Case allegations that treatment was not appropriate(below Standard of Care) must be presented by medical experts. In this case, testimony from a neurologist, nurse, pulmonologist and toxicologist was presented to argue Chavez was alone for seven to 10 minutes. In that time, she lost consciousness and stopped breathing.

Jurors reached their verdict Sept. 23, nearly three years after the family filed its negligence suit against the hospital, and sided with the family. The jury awarded $5.85 million in medical expenses and $1.5 million for pain and suffering. Winnie Santiago, Alba's minor daughter was awarded $560,000 the loss of her mother's services.

The hospital filed motions for a new trial and to set aside or amend the final judgment.

Almost all circumcisions in the U.S. are performed with a Mogen clamp, a Gomco clamp or a device called the Plastibell. However, the safety of these devices is being called into question, as is the skill of the doctors in using these devices.

As reported in The Los Angeles times Melanie Hall sued both the doctor and the distributor of the Mogen clamp he had used to circumcise her now 8-year-old son, Terrel, after the doctor had cut off most of the tip of Terrel's penis. While the claim for Medical Malpractice against the physician was dismissed, Miltex Inc. and its parent company, Integra Life Sciences Holding Corp., agreed this summer to a $4.6-million settlement.

The Mogen clamp's name derives from the Hebrew word "magain," or shield. It was invented in 1954 by Rabbi Harry Bronstein, a Brooklyn mohel who wanted to standardize circumcision equipment then in use by both doctors and mohels without medical training who perform the procedure in private homes and other locations. A user first loosens the foreskin, then pulls it through the clamp and clips it off with a single cut.

See the video of a circumcision with the clamp:

There have been numerous reports in recent years of patients being injured by the Mogen clamp, which is much less popular than the other two types of circumcision devices, which are two-part systems that protect the tip of the penis.

As far back as August 2000, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a public health notice about the Mogen and Gomco clamps after receiving about 20 injury reports a year since 1996, including lacerations, hemorrhaging, penile amputation and urethral damage. Instead of recalling the devices, the FDA advised users to make sure they were using the correct size Mogen clamp and that the space between the clamp's jaws met manufacturer's specifications. The agency also cautioned against using replacement parts on the Gomco clamp, which led it to malfunction.

But complications continued. In the 11 years between the FDA warnings and the Hall settlement, the agency has received 139 additional reports of problems related to circumcision clamps, including 51 injuries, said spokeswoman Amanda Sena. Twenty-one of those reports were related to Mogen clamps, all but one of which involved injuries.

Miltex, one of several Mogen clamp manufacturers, stopped distributing the devices in 1994. "Although no obvious defect has been found with the clamp's design or manufacturing we have concerns over the possible mishandling of the instrument by practitioners and our inability to ensure the instrument's proper use," Miltex's then-president Saul Kleinkramer wrote in a letter announcing the decision.

But some of its devices are still in use. That troubles some medical experts, who say the Mogen clamp, unlike others, has a critical design flaw: It does not allow doctors or mohels to see what they are cutting.

In 2000, Miltex reached a confidential settlement with a North Hollywood couple whose newborn was injured during circumcision. Last year, a New York judge awarded $10.8 million in damages to a Florida couple whose son lost the head of his penis when he was circumcised with a Mogen clamp. The maker of that device, Mogen Circumcision Instruments of New York, already was in default on a $7.5-million judgment in Massachusetts.

Only about 10% to 20% of doctors use the Mogen clamp, according to Dr. David Tomlinson, who teaches family medicine at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and serves as the World Health Organization's chief expert on circumcision. But the clamp is popular with mohels because some orthodox Jews recognize only circumcisions performed with devices based on the traditional design, according to Dr. Fred R. Kogen, a mohel in Los Angeles.

Kogen has performed circumcisions with the Mogen, the Gomco and the Plastibell. He said he prefers the Mogen, which he has used on more than 7,000 babies, including his son.

With the Mogen clamp, a circumcision requires just one cut and is over in minutes. The Gomco and Plastibell devices require doctors to make multiple incisions, which takes more time and causes more pain, according to studies cited in the April issue of the Journal of Family Practice.

"In my mind, it was less traumatic to the child" to use the Mogen clamp, Kogen said. "I felt comfortable with it."

Continue reading "Circumcision Clamps Lead To Medical Malpractice and Product Liability Claims" »

The Million Dollar Advocates Forum is pleased to announce that MIami Personal Injury attorney Mark Alexander Kaire of Miami, Florida has been certified as a member of the Multi Million Dollar Advocates Forum. Mr. Kaire is presently a Life Member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, one of the most prestigious groups for trial lawyers in the United States. Membership in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum is limited to attorneys who have won million and multi-million dollar verdicts, awards and settlements. The organization was founded in 1983 and there are approximately 4000 members located throughout the country. Fewer than 1% of U.S. lawyers are members. Forum membership acknowledges excellence in advocacy, and provides members with a national network of experienced colleagues for professional referral and information exchange in major cases. Members of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum must have acted as principal counsel in at lease one case in which their client has received a verdict, award or settlement in the amount of one Million dollars or more. Members of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum must be Life Members of The Million Dollar Advocates Forum and must have acted as principal counsel in a case which resulted in a multi-million dollar verdict, award or settlement. Mr. Kaire is a member of both the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. Mark Alexander Kaire is a graduate of University of Miami School of Law and specializes in Medical Malpractice and personal injury.

Bryan Santana was born without arms and with only one leg. On Friday a Palm Beach County Jury awarded Bryan's parents $4.5 million to help them buy prostheses, wheelchairs and other medical services experts say he will need to live any semblance of a normal life.

This lawsuit touches on a very controversial topic and was brought under Florida's wrongful birth statute. Florida is one of about 25 states that allow parents to sue on behalf of children with disabilities, claiming they wouldn't have had the child had they known the extent of the child's disability.

The jury found that Dr. Marie Morel and an ultrasound technician fell below the standard of care by negligently administering a sonogram. But for their negligence, they would have discovered the abnormalities, and had Ana Mejia and Rodolfo Santana known about the abnormalities, they would have terminated the pregnancy.

As reported by the Sun Sentinel, jurors were appalled that the technician and Morel reported seeing four limbs on the second ultrasound Mejia received. When questioned, technician Tamara McClain couldn't explain why she noted that in the report Morel signed.

Because of this lawsuit, the office has changed its protocol. In accordance with national standards, it identifies each limb.

The $4.5 million is half the $9 million an expert said the couple will need to assure Bryan is cared for throughout his estimated 70-year life.

Juror Rebecca Long said the jury wanted to send a message that the care Mejia received was unacceptable, and that she was glad to hear of the change. "There's no reason this should have happened," she said.

The clinic wasn't the only one to miss Bryan's abnormalities. St. Mary's Medical Center failed to detect them on three ultrasounds it administered. It reached a confidential settlement with Mejia and Santana.

Continue reading "Medical Malpractice Jury Verdict of $4.5 Million for Wrongful Birth" »

A recent study published in The New England Journal Of Medicine sought to establish the
proportion of physicians who faced a medical malpractice claim in a year according to specialty.

The article suggests a significant variation across specialties in the probability of facing a claim, ranging annually from 19.1% in neurosurgery, 18.9% in thoracic-cardiovascular surgery, and 15.3% in general surgery to 5.2% in family medicine, 3.1% in pediatrics, and 2.6% in psychiatry. The study also sought to link payment amounts to specialties and found that Specialties that were most likely to face indemnity claims were often not those with the highest average payments. For example, the average payment for neurosurgeons ($344,811) was less than the average payment for pathologists ($383,509) or for pediatricians ($520,924), even though neurosurgeons were several times more likely to face a claim in a year.

Continue reading "Interesting Medical Malpractice Statistics" »

Common sense tells us that hospitals are where the sick go to get better. However, the following statistics on Hospital Malpractice indicate that Hospitals are where the sick go to get worse.

Created by: Medical Billing and Coding

When you think about the above statistics they are truly startling.

1. You are 33,000 times more likely to die from a Hospital Error than a plane crash.

2. An alarming 1 in 5 Hospitalized patients suffer from Medical Errors.

3. 1.7 Million infections are contracted in the hospital each year, and 99,000 people die per year from infections.

4. 7,000 patients are killed by medication errors every year

Continue reading "Hospital Error Statistics Are Alarming" »

Let's hope the defeats for Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry do not stop. Governor Perry is an advocate of Medical Malpractice reform and limiting patients rights. To that end, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, a former medical malpractice Defense lawyer, blocked key provisions of Texas' new law requiring a doctor to perform a sonogram before an abortion, ruling the measure violates the free speech rights of both doctors and patients.

As reported by the Associated Press, Judge Sparks upheld the requirement that sonograms be performed, but struck down the provisions requiring doctors to describe the images to their patients and requiring women to hear the descriptions.

The law made exceptions for women who were willing to sign statements saying they were pregnant as a result of rape or incest or that their fetus had an irreversible abnormality. Sparks questioned whether the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature was trying to "permanently brand" women who are victims of sexual assault.

The law -- one of dozens of anti-abortion measures that advanced through state capitals across the United States this year -- takes effect Thursday. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights had sued to block it.

Opponents argued that requiring doctors to describe a fetus' features would force them to say things against their will and would violate medical ethics requiring doctors to respect a patient's autonomy and act in the patient's best interest.

The Texas Medical Association, normally a supporter of Governor Perry, opposed the law because it dictated when a doctor must perform a procedure and how the doctor must deal with a patient. While a pre-abortion ultrasound is routine, it is not considered medically necessary.

Sparks wrote that forcing doctors to discuss the results with a patient who may not want to listen "compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen."

Sparks was particularly troubled by the requirement that victims of sexual assault or incest sign statements attesting to that fact to get around the provision. That would require women to disclose "extremely personal, medically irrelevant facts" that will be "memorialized in records that are, at best, semi-private," Sparks wrote.

"(It) is difficult to avoid the troubling conclusion the Texas Legislature either wants to permanently brand women who choose to get abortions, or views these certifications as potential evidence to be used against physicians and women," Sparks wrote.

Sparks also struck down several enforcement penalties for doctors who faced losing their medical license and possible criminal misdemeanor prosecution if they did not comply.

The ruling is a "huge victory for women in Texas and a clear signal to the state Legislature that it went too far when it passed this law," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The group said it had already received notice the state plans to appeal.

Governor Perry was critical of Tuesday's ruling. Perry had made the law one of his top priorities for the 2011 legislative session.

If you think that Medical Malpractice is a problem in Florida, wait until you see what is happening in China.

In 2006, the last year the Health Ministry published statistics on hospital violence, attacks by patients or their relatives injured more than 5,500 medical workers.

In June of 2010 a doctor was stabbed to death in Shandong Province by the son of a patient who had died of liver cancer. Three doctors were severely burned in Shanxi Province when a patient set fire to a hospital office. A pediatrician in Fujian Province was also injured after leaping out a fifth-floor window to escape angry relatives of a newborn who had died under his care.

In 2010 The New York Times published a story depicting the need for police officers in hospitals to keep disgruntled patients and their relatives from attacking the doctors.

Over the past year, families of deceased patients have forced doctors to don mourning clothes as a sign of atonement for poor care, and organized protests to bar hospital entrances. Four years ago, 2,000 people rioted at a hospital after reports that a 3-year-old was refused treatment because his grandfather could not pay $82 in upfront fees. The child died.

2 days ago friends and relatives of a patient who died on the operating table marched on Nanchang Hospital No. 1 with pitchforks and clubs. Hospital staff members learned that a mob of about 100 people was heading their way with crude weapons and took it upon themselves to mount a defense. Photographs and video posted on a local website showed men in white coats, apparently doctors, and T-shirted security guards brandishing what looked like oversize baseball bats. Although nobody was seriously injured in Tuesday's melee, the incident highlights a greater problem. To that end, medical personnel advocates complain that the more violent incidents are staged by hired thugs, paid by families of the deceased in hopes of winning compensation from the hospitals. Sometimes the protesters are from the same village or are semi-professionals in causing trouble. The Chinese have even coined a word for the paid protesters: yinao, meaning "medical disturbance." I know what you are thinking, and NO, they are not Medical Malpractice Lawyers.

"It has become a very sophisticated system for chasing profits. Whenever somebody dies in a hospital, the yinao will get in touch with the family and offer their services in exchange for 30% to 40%," said Liu Di, who is setting up a social network for medical professionals. Again, I know what you are thinking, and NO, they are not Medical Malpractice Lawyers.

Zhang Yuanxin, who is a medical malpractice lawyer, said it was difficult to sue for medical malpractice, even in the most egregious cases, and that tempted people to take matters into their own hands.

"This is the direct result of the lack of rule of law and the lack of a well-established social welfare system," Zhang said. "Conflicts like these are inevitable and there will be many more if people can't solve their problems through the law."

With overcrowded public hospitals, China has experienced a number of well-publicized scandals in which people were overcharged for unnecessary or dangerous treatments. In the 1990s, at a time when local governments were selling blood for profit, more than 1 million people contracted the AIDS virus through transfusions at public hospitals. Often victims in these cases have had little resource but to protest or petition -- an archaic process that involves going to Beijing to file grievances with higher authorities.

Doctors and nurses say the strains in the relations between them and patients' relatives are often the result of unrealistic expectations by poor families who, having traveled far and exhausted their savings on care, expect medical miracles.

Almost half the nation's doctors have no better than a high school degree, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Many village doctors did not make it past junior high school.

Primary care is scarce, so public hospitals -- notorious for excessive fees -- are typically patients' first stop in cities, even for minor ailments. One survey estimated that a fifth of hospital patients suffer from no more than a cold or flu. Chinese health experts estimate that a third to a half of patients are hospitalized for no good reason.

Once admitted, patients are at risk of needless surgery; for instance, one of every two Chinese newborns is delivered by Caesarean sections, a rate three times higher than health experts recommend.

Patients appear to be even more likely to get useless prescriptions. Drug sales are hospitals' second biggest source of revenue, and many offer incentives that can lead doctors to overprescribe or link doctors' salaries to the money they generate from prescriptions and costly diagnostic tests. Some pharmaceutical companies offer additional under-the-table inducements for prescribing drugs, doctors and experts say.

Doctors seem as unhappy as patients. They complain that they are underpaid, undervalued and mistrusted. One in four suffers from depression, and fewer than two of every three believe that their patients respect them, a survey by Peking University concluded in October.

In June, more than 100 doctors and nurses in Fujian Province staged their own sit-in after their hospital paid $31,000 to the family of a patient who died. The doctors were upset because after the patient died the relatives took a doctor hostage, setting off a bottle-throwing melee that injured five employees.

Like some other cities, Shenyang has been seeking ways to ward off disturbances, including setting up hospital mediation centers. Still, the city reported 152 "severe conflicts" between patients and doctors in 2009.

At Hospital No. 5, the memory of a January attack remains fresh. After a doctor referred a patient with a temperature to a fever clinic -- standard practice in China -- frustrated relatives beat the doctor and several nurses with a mop and sticks.

Continue reading "Doctors Attacks Highlight Medical Crisis In China" »

Florida Personal Injury Lawyers know that Injury Lawsuits often become a battle of experts. The issues which are most commonly contested are those of Causation-whether the subject accident caused the injury in question, and Permanency-whether the injury resulted in a permanent injury.

For the injured Plaintiff the testimony on the above issues is typically presented by the treating physician. In contrast, the defendant will retain and pay an expert to examine the Plaintiff and render opinions. Specifically, Florida Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 1.360(a)(1)(A) allows the defendant in a personal injury case to have a qualified expert of its own choosing perform a medical examination on the plaintiff with regard to the injury or injuries in controversy. This type of examination has come to be referred to as a "compulsory medical examination," or "CME."

In light of the fact that the opinions and testimony of the defense hired doctor are so critical, it is imperative to discover as much information as possible about the defense doctor and to videotape the actual examination.

Florida Law allows the Plaintiff's attorney to inquire as to the amount of money the particular doctor earns by conducting these examinations, the number of times he has examined individuals on behalf of the particular defendant and/or defendant law firm, the number of depositions given, trial testimony, etc. It is imperative to secure this information to show the doctor's bias.

Likewise, it is also important to videotape the examination. To that end, without videotaping the examination it is difficult to challenge the doctor on his examination, and what the actual Plaintiff's complaints were on a given day. It is not unusual for a defense doctor to testify that the Plaintiff did not have complaints on a given day, to minimize the complaints or the findings during an examination.

The video shown below is an actual video from a Compulsory Medical Examination.

The video makes it clear why it is so important to videotape these examinations.

Surgical Errors are a leading cause of Florida Medical Malpractice Claims. Palm Beach County Judge Nelson Bailey became a statistic for medical errors in October 2009, when he was admitted to Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach.

As reported by the Sun Sentinel, Judge Bailey underwent elective surgery for his diverticulitis.
The last thing he expected was that the surgeon who removed a section of his intestines would leave behind a sponge as big as a washcloth that would fester inside his body for five months and cause him agony before it was detected. However, that was not the only error.

While he was recuperating from surgery, Judge Bailey said a doctor prescribed a drug to lower his blood pressure. But the hospital pharmacy sent the wrong medication, and the nurse administered it without checking the label, the judge said.

"My heart was racing incredibly,'' he said. "The bells started going off at the nurse's desk.''

Judge Bailey said he survived that with no long-term effects and thought he was on his way to recovery. He was released from the hospital, but the discomfort in his belly didn't get any better.

"It got to the point where I was having more pain than I had gone in to have the surgery for in the first place,'' he said. "I was just fading away. I was losing weight. Some of the lawyers that work with me thought I was dying.''

Bailey had several X-rays and CT scans before one finally revealed the sponge in March 2010. "I got the call from both my surgeon and my gastrointestinal doctor five minutes apart saying, 'There's a sponge in you. It needs to come out right now,' " he said.

The surgeon, Dr. David Kurtz of West Palm Beach, offered to do it at no cost, Bailey said, but the judge declined and instead went to Cleveland Clinic in Weston, where doctors also removed a portion of his intestines that had been perforated by the sponge.

Bailey hired a medical malpractice lawyer to pursue legal action against Kurtz, and the two radiologists who reviewed the scans but did not spot the sponge. The judge reached a confidential settlement with the radiologists in July.

Good Samaritan settled with Judge Bailey last year. State insurance records show the hospital paid $650,000.

During Bailey's surgery, hospital staff recorded in notes that they performed three counts of the tools and sponges going in and coming out. "Obviously, the count was wrong,'' the judge said.

Good Samaritan has since invested in new technology that uses specially tagged sponges and a wand that can be waved over a patient to ensure nothing is left behind.

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