Articles Posted in Suffolk County

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A 30-year-old mother won a medical malpractice suit against a hospital. She was awarded $5 million. Her newborn’s birth injuries were the direct result of medical malpractice.

A source reports that medical records submitted to the court for the case show that the plaintiff’s medical history showed nothing to be concerned about in relation to her pregnancy. She had been progressing through her pregnancy normally as was expected. However, her midwife reports that she had to be taken to the hospital in the early stages of labor, dilated to 2cm.

An external fetal monitor was placed on her. About seven hours later, though, the monitor started detecting a decline in the baby’s heart rate, and was failing to show the complete tracing of the mother’s contractions.

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A female patient recently underwent surgery to treat carpal tunnel syndrome. She had been suffering from this condition for years along with hypothyroidism, hypertension and diabetes. Before the surgery was due to start a nurse gave the patient a full checkup and put an IV line into the arm of the patient. The physician requested 5% dextrose, with 40mEq of potassium chloride; the infusion was started while the patient was waiting for the surgery to start.

The Nassau patient was due to undergo surgery shortly after the infusion started. However, as the first operation was more complicated than thought her surgery was delayed. This meant that the patient needed to wait longer than four hours before the surgery started. Around two hours after the IV line was started, the nurse noticed blisters around the infusion site. After surgery these blisters remained and caused necrosis which lead to painful scars.

According to the case details obtained by the Lawyer, the patient thinks that the problems were caused because the catheter was not inserted correctly. This meant that her arm developed eschars which became very painful.

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According to parents of a four-year-old, doctors were supposed to operate on their son’s right eye. The surgery was supposed to stop the boy’s eye from wandering. His parents report that that not what happened.

According to the parents, his eye surgeon first mistakenly operated on his left eye. When she realized her mistake, she then repeated the same procedure on his right eye – the correct one. As their son recovers from this medical mistake, they are concerned that they are observing more problems with the boy’s vision than they did before the surgery.

The mother of the young boy says to a Lawyer that she has not noticed any improvement in the right eye. She says she might even be seeing the left eye now wandering – when it didn’t before the mistaken surgery. She is worried about what the unnecessary surgery has done to his vision and what it could do in the future.

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New York governor Cuomo recently attempted to impose limits on medical malpractice lawsuit awards. He was doing this in an attempt to control the state’s health care costs. The measure did not pass and thus there can still be large malpractice awards won in the state of New York.

Arguments made in Nassau and Suffolk in favor of limits on medical malpractice lawsuits usually revolve around curtailing the rapid rise of overall medical costs which are due in part to large monetary awards given in malpractice cases. Opponents of limits say that any limit on a doctor or hospital’s liability greatly reduces their incentive to reduce errors and provide the best possible care, says a source.

Despite the unsuccessful measure which would have limited awards, the governor did manage to enact a fund for infants which were harmed due to medical malpractice. The fund would provide for future medical costs related to the medical errors that lead to further complications and medical expenses. The governor believes that the fund will better provide for the children than a one-time jury award would. The fund would cover increasing medical costs due to inflation and new technologies.

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A doctor who was in the United Kingdom (UK) serving as a LOCUM, or temporary, doctor was struck down for being both incompetent and dangerous. The Italian doctor had been booked as a LOCUM doctor in July 2008 through an agency as a locum Senior House Officer (SHO) for general surgery.

This strike down is the result of a lengthy investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC) that regulates doctors in the UK. The GMC heard from many medical professionals as they gave their accounts of the doctor’s medical competency, or the lack thereof. One of those testified that they had never seen anyone perform so poorly even at the undergraduate level. Another stated that the doctor did not even know the proper technique to ‘scrub up.’ The term ‘scrub up,’ refers to the thorough washing that surgeons do before they perform an operation.

Reports indicate that this doctor was so bad that he was not aware of common medical reporting procedures, and even some of the medical terminology that is understood even by non-medical hospital staff members. As an example, officials confirmed to a reporter, that the doctor thought that a ‘crash’ call referred to a car crash. In medical terminology, a crash call refers to a patient being in cardiac arrest.

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In 1978, a teenager’s spinal cord was destroyed by medical professionals who were administering radiation to fight thyroid cancer. As a result of the trial that stemmed from a lawsuit the girl filed against the hospital and pertinent staff involved, the jury awarded $7.6 million to her. Most of the payments are going to payoff medical bills that have amassed because of malpractice.

At the time, it was believed to be the single, largest payment awarded in a malpractice suit in the United States.

The 18-year-old expressed thanks when she said that the jury was full of “wonderful people and now I have a chance for my life.”

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A long-term care facility, more commonly referred to as a nursing home, is where many of those whose needs require more constant care than what a short-term care facility like a hospital can provide. They are also, where many of the long-term and terminally ill spend their remaining time before they die. These facilities are supposed to treat those persons whose care they have been entrusted with the utmost dignity and respect. Unfortunately, there are many cases that these facilities are anything other than trustworthy. A doctor has learned of one such facility that may fit into this category.

Equip for Equality, which is a watchdog group with the support of the federal government, recently conducted an investigation into a nursing facility for disabled children and young adults in Chicago, IL. The facility is facing closure as a result of an investigative journalism story by the Chicago Tribune that detailed death and neglect within the walls of the nursing facility.

Among the allegations that Equip for Equality is making toward the nursing facility is of destroying medication error documents, patients not being treated properly, doctors ignoring pages and lab reports, and internal investigations were sketchy at best.

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The University of Southern California (USC) claims they have corrected what they term a flaw in the system that allowed a group of surgeons to transplant a kidney into the wrong patient last January. The wrong transplant occurred when the wrong organ ID wound up on the wrong paperwork. Once that mistakewas made, surgeons were essentially given the okay to proceed with the transplant.

One of the things that a rep has learned is that this ‘rare’ occurrence is not unique to USC. There are similar procedures in use at other transplant centers across the country. The ‘rare’ event started as two kidneys arrived at USC for transplant on the same day. The USC University Hospital performs two transplants a week at the most. Another contributing factor to this rarity is that both kidneys were for the left side, and both kidneys were for someone with type O blood.

Normally, the nurse is to record the operating room booking slip, which includes the organ donor ID number. On this occasion, no number had been recorded. At this point, the nurse is supposed to transfer the number from the operating room booking slip to a blood verification form. This was to serve as a final verification that the blood types and correct organ are matched. Sources have said that since there was no organ donor ID number on the booking slip, the nurse got the number from the box that contained the kidney. The problem is that was the wrong kidney.

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When their baby was born with spina bifida, aka a congenital neural tube defect, the parents filed a medical malpractice and wrongful birth lawsuit stating that they had not been told about the purpose of a blood test, referred to as the Triple Marker Test or Alphafetoprotein test, offered to them during the pregnancy, which was to determine if the baby had spina bifida. As a consequence of not being told, the mother did not have the blood test said the Lawyer.

The parents felt that by not being told about the reason for the blood test that they were denied the chance to make an informed decision about continuing the pregnancy or not. When their child was born with a defect, both were devastated and filed for economic and non-economic losses, along with a claim for wrongful life. This motion to hear the claim for wrongful life was precluded and only the parent’s claims were heard.

The jury trial found in favor of the plaintiff parents and awarded past and future economic damages totaling $5 million. Another $5 million was handed down in non-economic damages to the mother and a further $2 million to the father, reported the source.

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A man has spent over 21 years in a coma due to mistakes which were made during cosmetic surgery. While the family claims that this is due to medical malpractice, the insurance company has refused to offer any compensation to pay for treatment.

The family hired a Lawyer to handle the case. The lawyer helped the family to file a case against the hospital. The lawsuit is trying to get 1.65 million euros for the family. This amount is considered to be far too high by the insurance company who have declined to offer this much compensation.

The family is not pleased with the outcome of the insurance company’s decision. They are upset by the treatment they have received and feel that they were not treated fairly at the short hearing. The family mentioned that they will continue trying to fight to get compensation for the mistakes which were made.

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