Syracuse Personal Injury Law Blog

FDA: Some hospitals not following reporting rules on medical devices

Published on: November 2, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

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.

A ‘tattoo’ for gauging alcohol level?

Published on: October 26, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

There are certain things that can turn an everyday drive into a life-changing traumatic event for an individual. One is encountering a drunk driver out on the roads. The actions of drunk drivers sometimes trigger catastrophic crashes. Skilled personal injury attorneys understand the major impacts an accident caused by a drunk driver can have on a person’s life, and can help victims of such crashes fight for compensation to put towards tackling the challenges these impacts pose.

One of the things that can lead to drunk driving is a person guessing wrong on how intoxicated they are when deciding to get behind the wheel. Most people rely mainly on their own judgment when deciding whether they are sober enough to drive. This judgment can sometimes be quite a ways off.

A new technology might provide a more reliable way for people to gauge whether they are sober enough to drive safely. The recently developed technology is a biosensor patch. The patch, which reportedly looks like a temporary tattoo, is a wearable that measures the alcohol level in the wearer’s sweat. Reportedly, it takes about eight minutes to measure this level. The device is designed to send the alcohol level information to the wearer’s cellphone, with the idea being that an alert could be generated for the wearer when the levels reach a point where driving wouldn’t be safe.

New York senator cashes in after blocking important malpractice law

Published on: October 24, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

The death of Lavern’s Law saved hospitals and insurers a lot of money. Should that money go to a senator who helped kill it?

This post is not a political endorsement. It is meant to call attention to the forces that affect victims of medical malpractice.

Earlier this year, New York legislators considered a bill that could have made it easier for countless victims of medical negligence to pursue compensation under the law. Despite widespread support, it was blocked – in large part by GOP senator and Health Committee Chairman Kemp Hannon.

Why would the chair of the Senate Health Committee oppose a bill that’s good for patients? According to the New York Daily News, It might have something to do with the powerful Greater New York Hospital Association, which loudly lobbied against the bill. The Association has formed a Super PAC that has spent nearly $200,000 on Senator Hannon’s behalf.

What can lead to medication mistakes at pharmacies?

Published on: October 19, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

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.

Federal government sets big traffic safety goal

Published on: October 12, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

There are a variety of things the states and the federal government do to try to keep the nation’s roads safe. One is to issue various regulations aimed at crash prevention. Another is to issue traffic safety goals, and to initiate campaigns directed toward the achievement of such goals. Recently, the federal government set a goal that is quite large and ambitious.

This goal is to bring traffic deaths down to zero in the next 30 years. This joint goal of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the safety advocacy group the National Safety Council was announced last week.

There would be quite a long ways to go for this goal to be achieved. Traffic deaths are currently very far away from zero. In 2015, there were over 35,000 fatalities out on America’s roads. And recently, motor vehicle accident deaths have been trending up, not down.

Patient identification mistakes at hospitals

Published on: October 5, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

Instances of a mistaken identity can happen in a lot of different environments. In some contexts, such errors at worse will result in some embarrassment. In others though, such mistakes could be quite harmful. For example, at health care facilities, a misidentification of a patient could seriously endanger the patient’s health.

Recently, an ECRI Institute report looked into patient identity errors. These are mistakes in which one patient is confused with another. The report looked at over 7,600 such errors that were voluntarily reported by health care organizations. These errors came from over 180 organizations. They occurred between January 2013 and July 2015. ECRI officials postulate that these cases likely make up only a small portion of the patient identity mistakes that actually occurred.

While most of the mistakes the report looked at did not result in a patient getting hurt, there were a couple that were fatal and some others that resulted in serious harms.

The impacts of increased concussion awareness

Published on: September 28, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

Increased awareness regarding the concussion risks kids can face and the dangers head injuries can pose to children is a very important thing. It could help on several fronts. For one, it can help with encouraging proper prevention efforts in things like youth sports. Also, it could help increase the likelihood of kids who suffer a potentially concussion-causing head injury promptly getting the medical care they need.

Increased concussion awareness might be a contributor to a recent trend that has occurred when it comes to kids in the 10 to 19 age group. This trend is an increase in concussion diagnoses among such kids. This trend can be seen in recent Blue Cross and Blue Shield research.

The study, which looked at medical claims data, concluded that between 2010 and 2015, individuals 10 to 19 saw a 71 percent concussion diagnoses increase. The study also found an increase in such diagnoses among the 20 to 64 age group, but that increase was much more modest.

AI assistants may help doctors diagnose breast cancer

Published on: September 24, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

How new AI technology could save cancer patients

Doctors go through extensive training to learn to diagnose critical conditions such as cancer. But even the smartest, most diligent physicians make mistakes sometimes. According to the healthcare journal BMJ Quality and Safety, breast cancer is misdiagnosed up to 28 percent of the time. Some of these errors occur when physicians are reviewing breast biopsy samples. In the best conditions, pathologists can accurately identify breast cancer in these samples with 96 percent accuracy.

96 percent is pretty good, right? Objectively, yes, but we don’t think it’s good enough for the other four percent. That’s why we’re intrigued about a new technological development that could raise that number even high. Read on to learn more.

Paging Dr. Robot…

Researchers from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) recently published a study about an artificial intelligence system trained to detect breast cancer. By “showing” the system hundreds of cancerous and noncancerous lymph node biopsies, they were able to teach it how to accurately detect cancer 92 percent of the time.

Determining whether a preterm birth was preventable

Published on: September 21, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

There are certain things it is generally best to steer clear of when it comes to a childbirth. One is a baby being born too far ahead of a due date. A premature birth (a birth that comes over three weeks earlier than the due date) can have a variety of risks associated with it.

This includes increased chances of the child developing harmful conditions in relation to the birth. A list of some of the complications babies can experience in connection to a premature birth can be found on our law firm’s page on preterm birth.

Sometimes, circumstances are such that medical professionals are powerless to prevent a birth from being premature. However, in other situations, there might be steps available to a doctor that could head off a potential premature birth, and help push the birth back to a time in which the baby is more developed and better able to handle the various things that go along with delivery.

When doctors give an incorrect MS diagnosis

Published on: September 15, 2016 | By Jeff DeFrancisco

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.