Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Delay to Treat or Failure to Diagnose a Medical Condition

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Cover_MedMysteries0225%281%29.jpgOften doctors fail to diagnose common variable immune deficiency (CVID). It takes an average of 6 years for patients to receive a correct CVID diagnosis because it is a rare form of immune deficiency that mimics other diseases and causes a variety of disparate ailments. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman describes the case of a woman who was submitted to numerous tests before being properly diagnosed with CVID. The woman’s oldest brother who is also a physician was diagnosed earlier with the same disorder and she kept telling the doctors and nurses about it but no one listened to her. Finally she was able to arrange a phone call between her brother and her hematologist. The hematologist listened to the brother because he was a doctor and then things started to move in the right direction. She started to receive infusions, the only way to treat CVID and the platelet count started to increase. After a few months she was in remission. She then saw two specialists who confirmed she had CVID a condition that so far has no cure and requires painful monthly infusions.

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Because medical needs of long term care patients are often being neglected when they transition from a long term stay in a nursing home to a home and community based services program, they are at a greater risk of hospitalization than those with similar conditions who choose to stay in a nursing home.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (J Am Geriatr Soc 62:71–78, 2014.) and led by Andrea Wysocki, PhD, Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island compares hospitalizations of dually eligible older adults who had an extended Medicaid nursing home (NH) stay and transitioned out to receive Medicaid home- and community-based services (HCBS) with hospitalizations of those who remained in the nursing home.

Home and Community based services programs for patients with long term care (LTC) needs have been very in demand recently not only because patients prefer to be in a home and community setting rather than in an institutional setting but also because the per-person costs are usually lower for HCBS than for nursing homes.

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Blatant medical malpractice was committed by the Emergency Room staff of the NYU Langone Hospital in New York that lead to the death of 12 year old Rory Staunton according to a recently released investigation by the the New York State Department of Health.

Rory Staunton died on April 1st 2012 from sepsis after a scrape on his arm became infected. He was taken to the ER at NYU Langone Hospital but was sent back home after the staff failed to diagnose sepsis. His condition worsened and he died the next evening.

According to the investigation by the NY Health Department “NYU Langone ER failed to provide care in accordance with acceptable standards of practice for both medical staff and nursing services, as well as a systemic failure related to the reporting and follow up of abnormal laboratory results”.

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A 30 year old patient who checked in last Sunday night at 10PM at St Barnabas Emergency Room for a rash was found dead in a waiting room chair at 6:40 the next morning by a security guard. According to an ER employee, there is no policy in place to check the waiting room to see if people who are waiting to be seen are still there or are still alive. The employee added that the man had been dead for several hours before he was found.

Read more here
Delay in treatment can be medical malpractice click here to learn more about it.

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Stephen%20Mackauf.pngOur Partner New York Medical Malpractice Attorney Stephen Mackauf was quoted extensively in the January Issue of Physician Risk Management. In the article “Causation: A problem for all in missed cancer cases” Stephen Mackauf explains that missed cancer claims typically revolve around factors such as:
– issues of fact, such as a patient claiming she reported a lump and the doctor says she didn’t – whether a patient’s refusal of a test or treatment was documented – whether a patient is able to prove significant harm caused by the delay in diagnosis

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Failure to diagnose a brain tumor can have horrible consequences on the life of an individual. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman writes about the dramatic story of Bebe Bahnsen, an outgoing and successful Washington newspaper reporter whose life was destroyed because doctors failed to diagnose a growing brain tumor that was pressing on her left frontal lobe, the portion of the brain responsible for speech, movement, emotional regulation and reasoning. Symptoms started with mild depression and as the tumor grew Bebe sustained a prolonged suicidal depression. Her social life and career were totally destroyed. For years she was hospitalized periodically, submitted to electroshock treatments, and prescribed numerous psychiatric drugs until finally a neurologist did the right thing. Dr Gawronski, now practicing in Baton Rouge, ordered an MRI and realized that a small benign brain tumor that had been previously diagnosed years before had reached the size of a lime and was the reason for her worsening mental illness.

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Failure to diagnose cancer in teenagers may be medical malpractice. Because cancer in young adults and teenagers count for only 1% of all diagnosed cancers, they have a higher risk of being misdiagnosed. A recent report “Improving Diagnosis: Teenage Cancer Trust Report on Improving the Diagnostic Experience of Young People with Cancer” was recently published by the Teenage Cancer Trust in London. This report discusses challenges to early diagnosis of cancer for teenagers and offers guidance for clinicians and families to improve care for these patients.

 

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Jappa.jpegFailure to diagnose May-Thurner Syndrome may be medical malpractice that can lead to post-thrombotic syndrome, potentially fatal pulmonary embolism, pulmonary hypertension, and in the worst case paradoxical embolism.

In a recent article published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, the author Jaclyn Leitner who practice general medicine in Newark, New Jersey describes the case of a 28 year old female marathon runner who visited her office with groin pain. The author explains how to properly diagnose May-Thurner syndrome and the available treatments.

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In a very sad medical malpractice case a 16 year old girl died of brain cancer after none of the 13 doctors who failed to diagnose the brain tumor ordered an MRI. Natasha Simmons had all the symptoms of a brain tumor: headaches, numbness, back pain, vomiting and problems with her eyesight. She visited 13 doctors over a one year period but none of them ordered an MRI. An ER doctor refused a scan and said they were reserved for life and death situations. 11 months later, an MRI was finally done but it was too late. Natasha Simmons was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor and died 8 days later.

Read more in the Huffington Post

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Doctors often fail to diagnose cancer in women with dense breast tissue because mammograms screenings are not reliable for women with this condition. Recent statistics and studies also show that women with dense breast tissue have a higher risk of developing breast cancer. Therefore advocacy groups have been pushing for legislation that requires doctors to report breast density to their patient. In New York, failure to inform a patient about dense breast tissue is now against the law and may support a claim of medical malpractice. The legislation was signed by Governor Cuomo on July 23 2012 and took effect last January. A total of 18 states have enacted dense breast notification laws, and 10 more have laws pending. Who is supposed to do the reporting and what they are supposed to tell patients varies from state to state.

In “Dense Breast Legislation in the United States: State of the States” published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, Soudabeh Fazeli Dehkordy, MD, MPH, and Ruth C. Carlos, MD, MS, from the Department of Radiology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine in Ann Arbor provide a detailed review of the state of this law at states and federal level.

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