As mentioned Nov. 22, the New Yorker recently published an article on the medical liability morass by its medicine correspondent, Dr. Atul Gawande. The piece still isn’t online (sorry) but Common Good has posted a summary of the article with some quotes, as well as a link to coverage in the Dec. 20 Medical Post.
Posts Tagged ‘medical’
Senator Coburn to hang up stethoscope?
The combination of high malpractice insurance rates and inflexible Senate ethical rules may force Senator Coburn to stop practicing medicine (via Medpundit).
Florida emergency rooms
They’re facing an emergency of their own:
An increasing number of Palm Beach County doctors, including many who no longer have malpractice insurance coverage, are refusing to work in the emergency room or reducing the days they are willing to work there because they fear the added liability risk.
The problem has led to delays in treatment and required some emergency patients to be transferred to — or “dumped” on — hospitals in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and as far away as Gainesville.
(Phil Galewitz, “Cures sought for ER doctor shortages”, Palm Beach Post, Dec. 11)(via KevinMD).
Also from KevinMD regarding emergency rooms, here’s some advice from a plaintiff’s lawyer on how to behave if you’re a patient using an ER. It does not go over well with Kevin’s readers.
Cerebral palsy verdict of the day: Memorial Hospital in St. Clair County, $7.1M
Rex Carr (Nov. 6 and links therein) was the plaintiffs’ attorney. Memorial Hospital released a statement:
Memorial Hospital and its over 600 nursing professionals and 300 Medical Staff physicians are obviously disappointed with the jury’s decision in this case.
As in many local court proceedings, Memorial has identified a significant number of important legal issues in this case and will appeal the decision.
Memorial is confident that either the Appellate Court or Supreme Court will agree that a substantial number of serious errors justify a retrial or directed defense verdict.
Expert testimony in this case conclusively determined that Brandon Bauer suffered a rare genetic disorder, hyperinsulinemia. This genetic disorder, despite any form of treatment, is many times fatal and very often results in severe brain damage.
Memorial also concurs with the expert testimony presented that nursing professionals and the physician from Belleville Emergency Physicians, PC did their best to care for their patient under clinically-difficult circumstances and rendered only the high-quality care for which they are so well known.
The medical and scientific evidence and expert testimony in this case clearly do not support this verdict. Memorial has no choice but to appeal this decision because of the serious implications it has for Memorial and all other hospitals and physicians in this area.
If such verdicts are left unchallenged, several hundred healthcare jobs will ultimately be lost from the community.
In addition, it will be more difficult, if not impossible, to recruit replacements for the large number of physicians who have fled this area during the last three years because of high malpractice premiums and fear of unfair treatment in some local courts.
(William Lamb, “Jury awards $7.1 million to parents of boy who developed cerebral palsy”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 5 (via ICJL News)).
Taxpayers on hook for $60.9M cerebral palsy case
Lawyers blame Jacksonville Navy hospital doctors for Kevin Bravo Rodriguez’s severe cerebral palsy (Nov. 12; Nov. 4, 2004; Feb. 2, 2004; Aug. 13, 2003; etc.). He cannot see, speak, swallow, or move his arms and legs, and will not live past age 21. Modern technology saved Bravo Rodriguez’s life after he was born without a heart-rate or respiration, and keeps him alive with 24-hour care that was adjudged to cost $10 million over the course of short life. The verdict included $50 million in pain and suffering. Because this was a Federal Tort Claims Act case, a judge was the finder of fact, and Carter-appointee Senior District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez can be credited with the largest FTCA verdict in history, which (including the millions in jackpot attorneys’ fees) will come out of taxpayers’ pockets unless it is reversed on the government’s promised appeal. (Nikki Waller and Noaki Schwartz, “A bittersweet $60.9 million”, Miami Herald, Nov. 25). This is attorney Ervin Gonzalez’s second appearance in Overlawyered this year for a $60 million+ verdict—see July 10.
Leading NC Democrat loses cerebral palsy case
Wade Byrd gave $100,000 in soft-money to John Edwards, and a personal-injury attorney at his firm was named chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, but Byrd failed to follow in Edwards’s footsteps in a recent cerebral palsy case when a jury that had sat through the five-week trial found for all of the defendants after an hour of deliberation. Byrd had sought $30 million from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, two doctors, and a nurse who had the bad fortune to be present when Joseph O’Hara was born with severe brain damage. Though O’Hara had lesions on his placenta, and though there’s no relationship between C-sections and cerebral palsy rates, Byrd tried to claim that the fetal heart rate monitor showed wrongdoing. (James Romoser, “Doctors found not liable in baby’s brain damage”, Winston-Salem Journal, Nov. 23).
In other cerebral palsy litigation news, a clever group has reserved the web-domain AskTheDoc.org, and must be paying a fortune to advertise on Google for “cerebral palsy” search terms. While masquerading as medical advice (and the website does have some rudimentary resources), the website encourages parents of children born with cerebral palsy to believe that most cerebral palsy is caused by malpractice. It’s not clear if trial lawyers are behind the website (as they are with this similar site that fails to distinguish between “it’s” and “its” and is registered in the same state with a similar IP address), or if it’s just a spam source. The latter website gives some “indicators” that “a medical mistake may have caused your child’s cerebral palsy,” including “a specialist was called to care for your newborn.”
In the New Yorker
The New Yorker’s talented medicine correspondent, Atul Gawande, is said to have an article in the Nov. 14 of that magazine “about who pays the price when patients sue doctors”. It isn’t online, but the magazine’s website has posted an excellent Q & A with Gawande.
Condition critical? A medical liability debate
Point of Law’s latest “Featured Discussion” is between Bill Sage, professor of law at Columbia and a prominent researcher on issues of medical liability, and the Manhattan Institute’s Jim Copland, discussing the Institute’s recent “Trial Lawyers Inc. — Health Care” report. It’s scheduled to run all week and should not be missed by anyone interested in malpractice issues (more).
“Trial Lawyers Inc. — Health Care”
Last week the Manhattan Institute (with which I’m associated) released Trial Lawyers Inc. — Health Care, the third in its series of “annual reports” on the doings of the litigation industry. (The first two were a general nationwide report under the title of “Trial Lawyers Inc.“, and a report on trial lawyers’ doings in California). While I can’t take credit for the new report — Jim Copland, who heads the Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, is the one to thank — I can report that the new publication is chock full of valuable facts and statistics about the health care litigation scene, and is must reading for anyone who wants to follow the subject. Subdivision/chapters include:
Drugs and Medical Devices
Special Focus: Vaccines
Medical Malpractice
Special Focus: Hospitals
Health Maintenance Organizations
Government Relations/Public Relations
For our posts on these issues, see our “Bad Medicine” pages, first and second series, and (for pharmaceutical matters) our products liability page. The new TLI report, again, begins here in HMTL form, and can be downloaded in PDF form here.
“Who Will Deliver Our Grandchildren?”
Scathing editorial by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) about the implications of cerebral palsy litigation (restricted access; RedStateMoron, Oct. 7; MommyBlawg, Oct. 8) (my take).