Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

Health officials say that during three unrelated spinal surgeries, surgeons at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center operated on the wrong vertebrae of each patient. According to the hospital’s health care quality senior vice president Dr. Kenneth Sands, each Boston wrong-site surgery (the first one occurred last September) involved surgeons who miscounted the vertebrae and instead operated on the one above or below the segment that was diseased. Two of the botched spinal operations were conducted by the same doctor.

Sands says that although human mistakes caused the Boston surgical errors, the surgeons involved did follow standard procedures, including taking a “time out” to confirm what type of surgery was to be performed and on what body part. The medical mistakes occurred even though the teaching hospital had taken preventive steps.

The medical errors were detected in post surgical X-rays. While one person’s back pain got better despite the wrong-site surgery, two patients had to undergo second surgeries. The Boston medical malpractice attorney for one of the patients says that his client, a 37-year-old female, now suffers from limited mobility and continues to experience pain.

Massachusetts and federal health inspectors have since cited Beth Israel Deaconess for problems with its surgical service. The hospital says that since these three Boston wrong-site spinal surgeries, it has already made improvements, such as adopting a checklist to help surgeons mark the right vertebrae and hiring an outside expert to assess the hospital’s spinal surgery procedures.

Spinal surgeries can lead to serious injuries and complications, including disability, chronic back pain, nerve damage, dural tear, infection, bleeding, incontinence, and permanent disability. Patients that have sustained injuries because a surgeon or another medical professional was negligent may have grounds for a Boston medical malpractice lawsuit.

Beth Israel erred in 3 spinal operations, Boston.com, December 24, 2010
One Hospital: Three Wrong-Site Surgeries in Four Months, JDSupra

Related Web Resources:
Wrong-Site and Wrong-Patient Procedures in the Universal Protocol Era, Archives of Surgery
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

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A Worcester jury has awarded Laura M. Ginisi and Joseph A. Ginisi nearly $2 million for Massachusetts medical practice in their case against St. Vincent Hospital. Joseph, 63, is now legally blind and cannot walk without assistance.

In their Worcester, Massachusetts medical malpractice complaint, the couple claims that the hospital misdiagnosed several of Joseph’s strokes and delayed the treatment he required for cancer. They claim that he sustained physical and mental injuries after going to the hospital for medical care in January 2004. Since that year, Joseph, an ex-trucker, has lived at the Millbury Health Care Center.

Joseph told his wife that he was feeling unwell on January 23, 2004. He went to St. Vincent where he underwent a CT scan. Doctors thought that the scan showed old lesions. They diagnosed him with vertigo, told him to take medication and follow up with a doctor, and discharged him. However, results from an MRI that he later took showed that he recently suffered strokes.

About 40,000 to 80,000 hospitalized patients are killed each year because of diagnostics mistakes (such as delayed diagnosis, wrong diagnosis, and misdiagnosis)-considered the number one cause of medical malpractice lawsuits. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on this issue, as well as the fact that doctors and other medical professionals are examining past medical malpractice cases to develop programs geared toward preventing similar medical errors from happening in the future. Our Boston medical malpractice law firm hopes that such analysis will indeed decrease the number of illnesses, injuries, and deaths caused by medical malpractice.

According to a study of malpractice claims, there is no one reason that diagnostic mistakes happen. Diagnostic mistakes occur most often with cancer cases. In the WSJ, breast cancer surgeon Susan Kutner reports that of the 320,000 abnormal mammograms and 420,000 abnormal biopsies identified by Kaiser Permanente in the last 15 years, 450 of the patients involved developing recurring or new cancer or abnormal biopsies. Kutner says these patients might not have been diagnosed if they hadn’t been brought in “proactively.”

In addition to medical mistakes made by the health providers resulting in diagnostic mistakes, patients can play a role in causing wrong diagnosis or misdiagnosis to happen. For example, a patient may wait too long before going to see a doctor, fail to follow medical directions, or decide not to show up to take a physician-ordered test.

According to Crico/RFM, 26% of the 1,137 medical malpractice cases between 2005 and 2009 involved diagnostic mistakes. 456 were “high severity” cases that caused patients serious injury, illness, or death. Almost half of these cases involved diagnosis mistakes.

Diagnostic Errors
Failing to diagnose or offering a wrong or delayed medical diagnosis to a patient in a timely manner can negatively affect his/her prognosis and course of treatment. It may even result in death. Wrong diagnosis, misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, and other diagnostic-related errors can be grounds for a Massachusetts medical malpractice case.

According to a 2007 article on CNN, the most commonly misdiagnosed illnesses include:

• Aortic dissection • Cancer • Heart attack • Clogged Arteries • Infection
What the Doctor Missed, The Wall Street Journal, September 27 2010
Five commonly misdiagnosed diseases, CNN, September 26, 2007

Related Web Resources:
Wrong Diagnosis

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Mike Findley and his wife Mary have agreed to settle their Boston medical malpractice lawsuit over an unsuccessful kidney transplant that he received at Tufts Medical Center for $1.25 million. The agreement was reached with the hospital, which was called New England Medical Center at the time, Drs. Krista Johansen, Erick Schadde, and Lauren Cornella and Nurse Janet A. Turgeon right before their Massachusetts personal injury trial was set to begin in Suffolk Superior Court.

The couple had accused doctors of botching what should have been the perfect kidney match in 2003. The donor kidney, which had comes from Mike’s brother Jeff, was the perfect match, but the Findleys contend that inexperienced physicians, administrative breakdowns at the teaching hospital, and understaffing allegedly contributed to its death just one week after the transplant, which took place on June 25, 2003.

According to Mike’s Boston medical malpractice attorney, following the transplant procedure, doctors and nurses failed to respond properly even though they knew that the patient’s urine output was dramatically reduced-a sign that the new kidney was failing. No attending physician was called and a renal ultrasound wasn’t ordered until the next day. Also, three of the doctors involved were in training and two were interns that had been working there for less than a month.

According to emergency room doctors, the fear of ER medical malpractice is what prompts some of them to overtest and overtreat patients. As a result, CT scans, blood tests, and prescription drugs may be ordered even though a patient actually doesn’t need them. Unfortunately, health complications can arise as a result of medical overtreatment.

Because of the fast-paced nature of Massachusetts emergency rooms, doctors don’t have the luxury of sitting down and extensively interviewing each patient. By ordering additional tests or providing more care than what a patient’s initial symptoms may indicate, many ER physicians are covering their bases. They also may feel pressure from patients who come into the ER demanding that they get an X-ray or a CT scan with results that can actually be verified instead of just a visual exam by a doctor.

However, what many patients don’t realize is that overtesting and overtreatment not only results in more expensive medical bills, but they also can increase health risks. For example, taking unnecessary prescription drugs can up the chances of complications. A CT scan not only only stresses out the body, but it also can infuse it with three years worth of radiation. The ER physician that ordered the unnecessary test or provided excessive medical care may later end up the defendant of a Boston medical malpractice lawsuit.

Emergency Room Facts (from AP):
• More than 116 million ER visits take place in the US every year.
• Chest pain and abdominal pain are two of the most common reasons why adults go to ERs.
• In nearly 50% of ER visits in 2006, ER doctors ordered CT scans, X-rays, and other imaging tests.
• 75% of ER patients were given medication, including antibiotics.
• 1/3rd of ER patients were given blood tests.
• From 2006 – 2008 more than 600 medical malpractice lawsuits were filed against ER doctors-that’s approximately 3% of their patients.

The Associated Press, which recently conducted an extensive review of medical overtreatment, reports that excessive medical care is an issue of concern not just in the ER arena, but also in other medical fields. Back pain, which is considered the leading overtreated condition, often results in repeated MRI scans and unnecessary spinal surgeries. Tens of millions of antibiotics are prescribed for colds and other viruses that medication can’t cure. Thousands of patients that have had stents inserted in them for blocked heart arteries could have been treated with medication instead.
ER doctors: Lawsuit fears lead to overtesting, AP/Google, June 21, 2010

Medical Overtreatment May Be Making Us Sicker, CBS News, June 7, 2010
Related Web Resources:
Malpractice and the emergency room, Wrong Diagnosis
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