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 Medical Malpractice

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Health-Technoogy-Hazards-scaledWhile health technology is often synonymous with progress, some medical devices can be dangerous and lead to patient injury and death. Every, year the ECRI Institute compiles a list of the 10 most hazardous technologies in healthcare. This year the Top 10 health hazards are:

1. Confusing recalls of at-home medical devices

This health hazard arises from Philips’ chaotic recall of defective respirators that cost the lives of hundreds of  at home patients suffering from sleep apnea.  Between April 2021 and October 2022, the FDA received 260 reports of  patients who died while using the Philips respirator. The device was recalled but the manufacturer contacted mostly healthcare providers which were supposed to pass the information to their patients. The process was chaotic and many patients were never proprely informed. As a result, they continued to use the defective device and died. Some patients were contacted directly by the manufacturer, but the notification was unclear. The language was technological jargon that patients did not understand proprely.

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The New York City hospital where the deadly medical error occurredA mother about to give birth died from medical malpractice in a New York City Hospital.  On July 2020, Sha Asia Temple, a 26 year old pregnant woman was at Woodhull Medical Center about to give birth to her daughter. Dr Dmitry Shelchkov, the anesthesiologist who was in charge of giving her the epidural inserted the catheter to deliver the anesthesia 13 inches deep in her back instead of the recommended 4 inches and administered a full dose of anesthesia neglecting to first administer a test dose and check on the patient before administering the full dose. As a result the anesthesia liquid was injected into the cerebrospinal fluid. The patient complained that she could not breath anymore and died shortly after. According to the federal hospital inspection report, a doctor who rushed to the rescue screamed at Dr. Schelchkov “I can’t believe this is happening again!”. Sha Asia Temple died but her baby, Khloe, survived.

The causes of the death of Ms. Temple were only recently made public and the investigation report indicates that over the two years preceding the death of Ms. Temple, 6 patients in  labor at Woodhull Medical Center “suffered adverse outcomes related to the administration of anesthesia” and Dr Shlchkov was involved in most of them. The same errors of pushing the epidural  needle too deep and mixing the anesthesia with cerebrospinal fluid as well as not proceeding to a test before administrating the full dose were reported. Despite the obvious pattern, the hospital did not take any measures to monitor the doctor who was finally stripped of his medical license in 2021.

Epidural complications are rare and while epidural complications started to occur regularly at Woodhull Medical Hospital, the system was so dysfunctional that cases went unreported. It took the death of a mother for the administrators of the hospital to notice the pattern.

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Best Law Firms - Standard BadgeOur firm is proud to announce that for the 13th consecutive year it has been named by U.S. News – Best Lawyers ® “Best Law Firms” a Tier 1 Firm in New York City for:

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medical malpractice attorney Allan ZelikovicOur NY personal injury law firm is proud to announce that Allan Zelikovic obtained a $1 million settlement for a delivery driver killed in Manhattan.

This medical malpractice/wrongful death case involved a 51-year-old delivery driver who presented to Wyckoff Heights Hospital with chest pain.  He was examined in the emergency room and determined to be suffering from a myocardial infarction (heart attack) and atherosclerosis. A decision was made to transfer the patient to another hospital equipped to perform coronary angiography and place percutaneous coronary artery stents to re-open the coronary arteries thereby restoring the blood flow to the heart.

The doctor ruptured the patient’s left circumflex and obtuse marginal coronary arteries during coronary artery stent placement and despite evidence of blood leaking into the pericardial sac, the doctor completed the procedure and discharged the patient to the recovery room where he suffered another heart attack

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grand-round-1Our Managing Partner Ben Rubinowitz conducted Grand Rounds for the Department of Radiology at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC. The talk was titled ”Preventing Medical Malpractice.” 

In this presentation Mr Rubinowitz showed real life examples of medical negligence and then cross examined various residents, fellows and attending physicians to educate them on medical errors that had taken place in the past that resulted in injury and death to his clients.

The point of the lecture and demonstration was to teach medical residents and attending physicians about medical failures which were preventable — but when not properly and timely addressed, those failures and omissions often lead to catastrophic injury.

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MeFDA-logodtronic HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device (HVAD) device caused the wrongful death of more than 3,000 people since it was introduced on the market more than 10 years ago. The sale and distribution of the heart pump was stopped in June last year but many patients still have the pump implanted in them. Now some of the batteries powering the device might be deadly too.

Medtronic announced last May that a model of battery that was powering the Medtronic HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device (HVAD) was defective and that it could cause serious personal injury or death if it was not changed for a new battery. An urgent Medical Device Correction letter was sent out by Medtronic to all affected customers on May 5th  recalling 429 devices manufactured in April 2021. Then a month later, after the company received 1,159 complaints including 6  injuries and one death, the recall of the same model of batteries was extended to those that were distributed since January 2009.

The recall affects 23,372 Medtronic HVDA Batteries with model number 1650DE that were distributed between January 1st 2009 and now

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Surgery at HospitalWhile too many hospitals in the US are sacrificing patient safety for profit, a small number of them are dedicated to focus on healthcare safety and quality.

NYU Langone Hospitals in New York, NY, Gouverneur Hospital in Gouverneur, NY, White Plains Hospital in White Plains, NY and NYU Langone Hospital Long Island in Mineola, NY are the only 4 hospitals in New York state that have been included in the Best Hospitals in America compiled by Money and the Leapfrog Group.

The Leapfrog Group is a nonprofit organization helping consumers to make informed decision. To be part of the list, hospitals that previously received a A grade from a previous assessment went through an additional assessment of  39 performance measures in the 7 following categories:

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cyber attack can arm patientsHospitals are one of the favorite targets of ransomware hackers because hospitals simply can’t afford to have their IT down as it can cause severe harm or even death to patients. As a result when a hospital  has its systems blocked by hackers it might be more willing to pay a ransom than any other type of organization in order to get their systems working again.

Recently, a debt collection company working with 657 healthcare providers announced that it had been the victim of a cyber attack. Hackers were able to obtain patients information including their name, address, social security number and medical information. It is unclear so far how many patients have been affected but this might have been of of the largest healthcare data breach of 2022.

CISA warns hospitals and healthcare providers of Maui ransomware

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NYC Medical Malpractice Attorneys Jeff Bloom and David LarkinOur NY Medical Malpractice attorneys Jeffrey Bloom and David Larkin settled a wrongful death case for $3 Million for the death of a man overdosed with narcotics

Our client, a man in his fifties, walked into the emergency department of his local hospital with complaints of abdominal pain.  He was dead within hours.  He left behind a wife and three grown sons.

The nurse receiving the telephone order from the pain management specialist transcribed it incorrectly and raised the dose for Dilaudid to a deadly amount

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Medical Malpractice Lawyer Ben RubinowitzOur Managing Partner, Ben Rubinowitz,  has been invited to speak at the American Urologic Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans this Friday. 

This is one of the largest medical conferences in the world and is attended by more than 25,000 Urologists.

Due to the successful results our firm has had in medical malpractice cases, Ben has been asked to share his knowledge with treating urologists.

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