Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

The medical malpractice case of 6 year old Claudialee Gomez-Nicanor who died after Dr. Arlene Mercado failed to diagnose her Diabetes Type 1 raises questions about the quality of care for Medicaid patients.

A pediatric endocrinologist treating a Medicaid patient earns $30 a visit while a pediatric endocrinologist treating someone with private insurance gets nearly $100 an hour. So Medicaid providers often have trouble filling their networks with enough doctors who specialize in common issues like diabetes. Patients are sometimes left to the lesser skilled or lesser known-doctors who can’t afford to turn away the business.

You can read the complete story in a very detailed article from the Village Voice.

After a surgeon realized he operated on the wrong leg of the patient he immediately reported the error to the hospital and offered a thorough apology to the patient. Should he be punished for this medical error?

This was the question asked by The New York Times to its readers in the Sunday Dialogue. Most readers believe he should.

At Gair Gair Conason Steigman Mackauf Bloom and Rubinowitz although we believe that a doctor in such an obvious case of negligence should apologize he should also be held responsible for his glaring error and that the patient should be compensated for the pain and suffering, otherwise unnecessary further medical treatment and loss of income caused by the doctor’s inexcusable negligence. The author states”People in the medical field are well intentioned and feel great distress when they harm patients.” That may be so but it does not compensate the patient for the error. What often happens in these cases is that the doctor’s insurance company puts the patient thru unnecessary litigation rather than settling an obvious case of negligence for fair and adequate compensation.

Errors when prescribing opioids may constitute medical malpractice that can lead to the death of a patient. In the US, the use of opioids to treat chronic non-cancer pain has increased dramatically in recent years and because of their highly addictive nature, some patients may use prescribed opioids for non-medical purposes increasing their risk for injury or death.

Providers may make multiple errors when prescribing opioids for non-cancer pain. Most common errors are inadequate screening for safe and effective opioid use, inability to monitor adherence, improper selection of opioids and insufficient consideration of co-morbid conditions.

In a recent case study, Web Morbidity and Mortality analyses the case of a 42 year old man who died of an overdose after doctors did not follow appropriate prescription practices.

$ 91.7 million was paid for more than 400 medical malpractice claims against the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2012. Cases included missed diagnoses, delayed treatment and procedures performed on wrong body parts. The highest settlement which was also the largest in 12 years was for $17.5 million to the family of Christopher Ellison who was left permanently incapacitated after getting teeth extracted at a Veterans Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the number of veterans taking advantage of VA medical care has risen significantly. Last year, the 152 VA hospitals and 190,000 doctors treated 5.6 million veterans, an increase of more than 30% compared to 10 years ago.

In the next 4 years, 1.2 million soldiers will become veterans. Some of them who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering post traumatic stress disorder while others survived injuries that would have been fatal during World War II or the Vietnam War.