Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

How hospitals act when it comes to medical devices matters greatly. This includes what a hospital does after injuries or deaths occur in relation to such a device at the hospital.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration puts reporting requirements on hospitals when it comes to such incidents. Among these rules are ones requiring hospitals to report such incidents within a certain amount of time of them occurring. Prompt reporting of such occurrences can shine a light on whether there are any ongoing safety issues/problems with a given medical device. This, in turn, can give the government and manufacturers the opportunity to promptly address such problems/issues.

So, one would hope hospitals would closely follow such rules. Unfortunately, FDA investigations have revealed that hospitals sometimes fall short when it comes to meeting these requirements. Among the things the investigations found was that 12 hospitals failed to engage in prompt reporting after medical-device-related injuries or deaths occurred. These hospitals were from all across the country, including here in New York.

Medication errors can come about in many different ways. Sometimes, they happen as a result of mistakes made at pharmacies. Customers trust that pharmacies will get everything right when filling their prescription. Unfortunately, sometimes, this doesn’t happen. Incidents occasionally occur in which a pharmacist makes a mistake, such as a labeling error, a dosage error or an error involving giving out the wrong medication.

Several different things could increase a pharmacist’s likelihood of making these kinds of errors, including:

• A pharmacist not focusing on the task at hand.
• Lack of adequate staffing at a pharmacy.
• Shortcomings when it comes to consultations.
• Time pressures.
• A particular heavy workload.
• A high-stress work environment.
• Overly confusing work systems at a pharmacy.

As one can see, when it comes to medication error prevention at pharmacies, there are a range of different things it can be important to address. So, for the sake of their customers, it is critical for pharmacists and pharmacies to keep the prevention of medication errors in the forefront in their various different actions and decisions.

A misdiagnosis can have many negative effects on a patient. One is a patient getting treatment for a condition they don’t actually have. Such unnecessary treatments can be problematic, particularly if they carry risks of severe side effects.

One medical condition that has treatments that can have major side effects is multiple sclerosis. So, avoiding MS misdiagnoses is very important. Unfortunately, this disease has certain aspects that can make it particularly prone to being diagnosed when it isn’t actually there.

For one, its symptoms can be similar to those of other conditions. Also, there currently aren’t objective biomarkers that can be tested for when it comes to this condition. So it could be easy, when proper care isn’t taken, for a doctor to mistake another condition for MS.

When receiving a treatment that a doctor recommended, patients generally trust that the treatment is one that actually has the potential to help them with their particular medical condition. Unnecessary treatments can have negative consequences for patients, as some treatments can have risks associated with them that patients would be needlessly exposed to if they were given the treatment when it was not likely to have a positive effect. So, one would generally hope doctors would be taking evidence of effectiveness into account when deciding what treatments to recommend.

However, a recent article on the Washington Post’s website indicates that some treatments have remained common despite the fact that recent research had pointed to them not being as effective in as wide of range of circumstances as was initially thought. The three common treatments that the article identified as being in this category were:

• Back pain injections.
• Arthroscopic knee surgery.
• Stents.

This does not mean that these treatments are never the right ones for a patient, rather it raises the possibility that they are perhaps being used more often than is needed. So, when it comes to recommending these types of treatments, or any type of treatment for that matter, one would hope doctors would carefully think about whether the treatment is likely to have a positive impact on the patient given available evidence and the patient’s unique circumstances, rather than just relying on things like the treatment being a relatively common one.

Last time, we began looking at the positive trend of increasing transparency in the delivery of health care. There are a variety of positive changes that will come about as the result of increased transparency in health care, particularly when medical error ends up harming a patient. Unfortunately, in many cases, patients receive poor communication from providers and hospitals and are left to fall back on the legal process to protect their rights.

As we noted, health care providers and systems are the primary holders of information when a medical error occurs. This isn’t to say that every case of medical error will be documented, because that isn’t true. In cases where medical error is reported and documented, though, it is up to the patient to make use of the legal process to obtain the information he or she needs to build a sound medical malpractice case. 

When parents begin to notice developmental issues related to cerebral palsy, speaking to a lawyer sooner is better than later to ensure that parents understand the extent of the injury and their options for seeking appropriate compensation. Parents who notice developmental issues can have a medical evaluation done to determine cause of the problems. Medical evaluation of an infant is based on the so-called Apgar test, which evaluates an infant’s appearance, pulse, grimace, activity and respiration.

We don’t need to debate the merits of a for-profit medical system today, other than to say that that’s exactly what we have in this country right now. As a result, the profit drives all of the decision making, and that can lead to some horrible mistakes or some sub-standard care for patients who are just innocently trying to take care of themselves.

Whether you approve of the current system or not isn’t the point. The point is that we all have an expectation that our doctors, hospitals and medical personnel will make the best decisions for us regarding our care and health. When a mistake is made or a medical error causes us harm, then we need to consider our next legal steps.

There are a lot of procedural elements that you need to follow in order to ensure you are doing things the right way prior to filing a medical malpractice lawsuit. You need to support your claims and get medical evidence that shows why someone provided substandard care to you, or why the medical error happened and how it caused you harm.

In our previous post, we looked at the VA’s recent admission that it failed to provide qualified professionals to conduct proper screening for traumatic brain injury on thousands of patients. As we noted, such a failure would ordinarily be considered grounds for liability were it not for the fact that medical professionals working for a government institution are immune from personal liability for negligence.

Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, federally supported health centers, their employees and eligible contractors are considered immune from lawsuits and the Federal government acts as their insurer. This means that those who are treated at health centers funded by the Health Center Program are unable to sue individual physicians and staff members, or the institutions, for medical malpractice or medical negligence. 

Immunity only applies, though, when the employees are acting within the scope of their employment. The scope of employment rule would exclude actions taken by federal health care employees which are clearly not part of their job duties. Typically, though, this will not be a major issue in FTCA litigation.