If you learn that your doctor was sued for medical malpractice, should you immediately change doctors? A recent article in Consumer Reports explains how patients can find information about their doctor and what they should do about it. Not every doctor who was sued for medical malpractice is a bad doctor.…
251,000 people died from medical error in the US in 2013. This was the third highest cause of death that year in the US after cancer (585,000) and heart disease (611,000) according to estimates calculated by Martin A Makary, professor and Michael Daniel, research fellow at the Department of Surgery of Johns…
The fear of providing lawyers with new weapons for medical malpractice lawsuits and the idea that the FDA wants to tell doctors how to practice medicine are among the many reasons why most physicians are still opposed to mandatory training for prescription of painkillers . In 2012 a recommendation by an expert…
A fire erupted in a New York hospital operating room while a patient was having surgery. The accident happened in 2014 at NYU Langone Medical Center but the results of the investigation were only recently released by the New York Department of Health. The report was obtained by the NY Post under a…
Too many patients requiring complex surgery are suffering the devastating consequences of medical malpractice committed by inexperienced surgeons who negligently performed the surgery. Some medical experts believe that there should be some type of legal way to prevent patients from undergoing high risk surgeries with inexperienced surgeons in hospitals that handle a low volume of…
The New York Presbyterian Hospital / Weill Cornell Medical Center recently settled a 2.2 million lawsuit with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for allowing a TV crew to film two patients without their consent (see press release). In 2011 Mark Chanko was hit by a garbage…
Although very rare, failure to diagnose and treat desmoids tumors, also called aggressive fibromatosis, a tumor that develops in the fibrous tissue that forms tendons and ligaments, can be medical malpractice. Desmoids tumors are very rare and difficult to diagnose and doctors are still debating what is the most appropriate categorization and…
The medical practice of trying to avoid scar formation at the site of a spinal cord injury may indeed not be correct. Every year approximately 12,500 American will suffer a spinal cord injury and an estimated 276,000 people in the US are suffering from long term effects related to this injury. For decades…
A doctor who doesn’t screen a child treated for Cushing syndrome for depression related mental illness may commit medical malpractice. Cushing syndrome is a rare disease that occurs when the body produces too much of the hormone cortisol. It can lead to obesity, infections, bone fractures and kidney stones. Therefore it shouldn’t…
renal mass in a 3 year olds child Failure to timely diagnose Denys-Drash syndrome can be medical malpractice that can lead to renal failure and ultimately death. Denys-Drash syndrom is a very rare congenital disorder that affects young children. There are only 150 known cases in the world therefore very little…