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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Medical maplpractice attorney Ben RubinowitzThis past Saturday our managing partner Ben Rubinowitz lectured to urologists at the Societies for Pediatric Urology SPU2021 Pediatric Urology Fall Congress held in Miami, Florida.

Ben presented a dynamic talk as to the pitfalls of inadequate care and the resultant harm that comes to patients when doctors fail  to provide appropriate treatment. To reinforce his points, Ben cross examined doctors with regard to medical malpractice.  Ben’s talk and demonstration focused on testicular torsion cases and circumcision cases gone wrong. “I consider it an honor to be invited to speak at both the Mayo Clinic and at the Pediatric Urology Fall Congress,” said Ben Rubinowitz.  “ If we can prevent patients from being harmed we have all done something good — remember, we are all in this together — and no patient needs to suffer an injury that could have been prevented.”

For more than 25 years Ben has shared his expertise with physicians throughout the country.  This  program was attended by more than 300 urologists from across the country.

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hospital readmission can be negligenceExcessive patient readmissions is usually a sign of hospital negligence. Not only can it worsen the patient’s condition and extend recovery time but it also increases the patient’s bill.

In order to curb readmission rates and make sure hospitals pay more attention to patients after their departure, the Hospital Readmission Program (HRRP) was created in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act. It took effect in October 2012 and since then, bad players with high readmission rates are being penalized by Medicare and get their payment for each of their Medicare patients reduced by up to 3%.

A total of 3,046 hospitals in the country are included in this program while hospitals treating children, veterans and psychiatric  patients are excluded.

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Best Law Firms - Standard BadgeOur New York Personal Injury Law Firm is proud to announce that Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf has been named a Tier 1 firm in New York City for 5 practices by U.S. News – Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms” 2022. These practices are:

  • Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs
  • Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs
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A physician committed serious medical malpractice and crimes by  hooking up chronically ill female patients with heavy doses of opioids and abusing them sexually. The abuse has been going on for 15 years according to 22 pending lawsuits, hospitals ignored patients complains and failed to inform future employers about these complains.

63 year old Ricardo Cruciani would develop personal relationships with his victims. He would prescribe them significant amounts of opioids and required “in person” appointments to get a refill. When the patient would arrive in his office he would ask for sexual favors in exchange for their prescription. If the patient refused, Cruciani would deny their refill.

This sordid scenario has been going on for at least 15 years in multiple States as during his career, Cruciani worked at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Union Square, at the Capital Institute for Neurosciences in Hopewell Township, N.J and at Drexel University in Philadelphia.  He lost his medical license after he was found guilty of indecent exposure and groping 7 patients in 2017 in Philadelphia. At that time he did not go to jail but he was registered as a low-level sex offender.

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FDA-logoAfter a recent study pointed fingers at the mismanagement of medical device recall by the FDA (see previous blog),  further investigations are confirming an outdated and broken system that leaves patients at risk of serious injury and death as unaware doctors continue to use defective devices on their patients.

A recent example of this outdated process is the recall of a sleep apnea ventilator device manufactured by Philips. It is not clear so far as to when exactly, Philips executives found out that the foam used to dampen the noise of the machine was breaking down and could potentially be inhaled or ingested by patients, exposing them to carcinogenic or toxic effects. However, the company announced publicly, on April 26th, while reporting Q1 earnings that it was creating a provision of 250 million Euros to cover costs related to possible risks to users in some sleep and respiratory care machines. While the company had probably already identified that the defective devices were the ones manufactured between April 2007 and April 2021, it waited almost two other months to initiate a recall and warn consumers of potential carcinogenic and toxic effects.  After the issuance of the recall, the FDA issued a safety communication on June 30. It took until July 22nd for the FDA to classify the recall as class I event and publish a public notification.

Does this mean that all patients have been contacted and had their ventilator changed? Not at all. In the actual process, the customers of the manufacturer, such as the hospitals, the providers, the retailers or the distributors are in charged of contacting the patients and they usually don’t do it.  Instead, doctors wait for the patients to come in with symptoms.

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New York City Medical Malpractice Lawyer of the Year 2022 Richard SteigmanCongratulations to our partner Richard Steigman for being named 2022  Best Lawyers®  Medical Malpractice – Plaintiffs “Lawyer of the Year” in New York City.  This is a very prestigious designation and we are very proud of Rich for his achievement. Additionally to being named “Lawyer of the Year” for Medical Malpractice in New York City, Richard was also included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America© for Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs in New York City.  Since 2010, Richard has been included 10 times in the New York City “Best Lawyers® ” list. Richard started working with us as a paralegal. He then obtained his Law degree and officially joined Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf as an attorney in 1997.

We also would like to congratulate the following attorneys at our firm for being  selected by their peers for  inclusion in the 27th Edition of  Best Lawyers©  in New York City:

  • Marijo C. Adimey (2016) [5]
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FDA-logoMany defective medical devices might still be used by medical professionals because deaths that occurred when using these devices are being mislabeled as injuries in the FDA Medical Database according to a study published last week in JAMA Network. The study looked at 290,141 reports of defective medical devices that resulted in serious injuries or deaths that were processed by an algorithm. They found that 52% were classified as deaths and 47.9% were classified by the algorithm as malfunction, injury, other or missing. Among these 47.9% that were not classified as death, 23% of these reports were indeed death reports that were not classified proprely by the algorithm. As a result many deadly devices might still be used on patients.  The FDA must review all reports classified as death but does not routinely review all reports that are classified as other or misfunction.

The most dangerous of all medical devices were the ventricular assist bypass devices. These devices represented 13% of all adverse event reports. Coming in second position was the dialysate concentrate for hemodialysis in liquid or in powder with 8.7% of all adverse event reports. The third most reported defective devices were the transcervical contraceptive tubal occlusion devices with 5% of all adverse reports.

The authors of the study also mention that 95% of the adverse event reports were made by manufacturers and not by healthcare facilities or physicians which might constitute a conflict of interest. The authors note that delays in reporting serious injuries or deaths were common. An example of this issue was the Essure permanent birth control device. 32,000 women reported issues with this device between 2002 and 2013 while the FDA only received 1,023 reports.

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NYC Medical Malpractice Attorney Ben Rubinowitz will participate to the virtual ED Director Forum
Our managing partner, Ben Rubinowitz will be a faculty member at tomorrow’s virtual 2021 ED Director Forum. He will be lecturing to emergency room physicians for the American College of Emergency Physicians.

In his presentation  “Medical Malpractice: Tips to Avoid It and What to Do If Sued!”, he will be discussing various aspects of emergency room medical malpractice including the failure to diagnose heart attacks, strokes, cancer and other cases involving emergency room failures by ER Physicians.

The objective of the lecture is to identify the common mistakes leading to ER medical malpractice, to recognize the typical errors committed after the litigation has  begun, to discuss how to prevent malpractice and to understand how to navigate the malpractice process.

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Dan-and-ElisaA faulty medical determination of child abuse or neglect can destroy the life of a child and its family. “Measure twice, cut once,” is a great rule for carpenters; it’s also an important lesson for Child Protective Services. 

In a recent article, Daniel Pollack, an attorney and professor at Yeshiva University’s School of Social Work in New York City, and Elisa Reiter, a Board Certified Attorney in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, look at the recent House Bill 2536  that was recently passed in Texas.   The bill allows parents who are accused of child abuse or neglect to ask for a second medical opinion before CPS terminates their parental rights. The bill especially seeks to protect parents of special needs children.

The bill was created after the family of Drake Pardo, a special needs child,  went through an unjustified ordeal with CPS.  The drama started when the Pardo family filed a complaint against a hospital that did not take care of them proprely. In a retaliation move, a doctor at the hospital filed a complaint with Child Protective Services based on a faulty medical report. As a result, Child Services showed up at the Pardo’s door in April 2019 and immediately removed 4 year old Drake from his parents. The parents had to fight an intense legal battle and were not allowed to take their child back until October 2019.

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breast-5472788_1280
The off-label use of Acellular Dermal Matrix (ADM) products in implant-based breast reconstruction can result in post surgical complications and problems for patients up to two years after the surgery according to a recent analysis by the FDA.

Off-label use not approved by FDA

Accellular Dermal Matrix is a type of surgical mesh that is developed from human or animal skin.  It has been approved by the FDA for specific use such as hernia surgery and more recently many surgeons specializing in breast reconstruction after a mastectomy have been using the product off-label.  The off-label use of ADM for breast reconstruction has never been approved by the FDA and a recent analysis found that some patients suffered complications up to two years after the surgery.

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