On May 23, 2012, a healthy 41 year old mother of three, Yolanda Medina, was admitted to Montefiore Medical Center for the sole purpose of donating a healthy kidney to her brother, Roberto Medina, who suffers from end-stage renal disease. The surgery went horribly wrong – – Yolanda Medina died during the surgery and her brother never received the kidney. To this day, he remains on dialysis.
The events surrounding the death of Yolanda Medina made national news. The case was one that cried out for resolution. Clearly, the hospital was at fault. And just as clearly, the lives of Yolanda Medina’s three young daughters were turned upside down.
While the tragic events surrounding the death of Yolanda Medina would result in a protracted and lengthy medical malpractice claim, such was not to be the case. Judge Douglas McKeon, the Administrative Judge of Bronx County and a jurist who has presided over thousands of civil claims in one of the busiest courts in the country, had other ideas. It seems that the United States Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) had funded a program whose main goals, among others, were to improve the quality of care and patient safety and at the same time compensate patients fairly and expeditiously when they are harmed. To make the program work, however, those involved would have to be educated. This doesn’t just mean educating the lawyers representing the doctors and hospitals but more specifically, the Judges who would be involved in administering the AHRQ program. Obviously, without medically informed, judge-directed negotiations, the program would be doomed from the start.
New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released its Five-Star Quality Ratings—a nationwide report card evaluating hospital safety, outcomes, and patient experience. The results for Bronx hospitals were deeply concerning: most received the lowest possible rating of just one star.
