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 Wrongful Death

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Dosing errors, delay to treat or failure to diagnose a medical condition because of poor interaction between humans and computers or loss of data can result in serious personal injury and wrongful death.

Poor choice or inadequate implementation of Emergency Department Information Systems (EDISs) can threaten health care quality and patient safety. Findings and recommendations from two work groups from the American College of Emergency Physicians were released in a report last Friday in Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The report indicates that The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services “meaningful use” incentive programs as well as additional requirements for detailed reporting of quality metrics have been major catalysts for the development and implementations of EDISs. However systems functionality varies greatly and it is crucial for emergency providers to actively participate in decisions about EDISs selection, implementation and monitoring.

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Nap%20Manny%20Product%20Defect.jpgNap Nanny and Chill recliners create a substantial product hazard. The products have design defects, as a result of which their use presents a risk of personal injury to infants. Further, the instructions and warnings are inadequate according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

The recall is part of settlement of an administrative complaint filed in 2012 by CPSC against Baby Matters LLC of Berwyn, Pa., which sought a recall of of the Nap Nanny and Nap Nanny Chill infant recliners affter the death of five infants. CPSC staff and Baby Matters LLC reached a settlement agreement that includes the recall and ends the legal proceeding against the company.

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In an Upstate New York truck accident that happened several days ago, a trailer disconnected from the rig that was pulling it and crashed into a minivan killing 7. Investigation will determine if the cause of the accident was mechanical failure or driver action.

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, mechanical failures are the cause of only 1% of fatal accidents involving large trucks and among mechanical failures, the truck’s couplings, hitches or chains are the cause of 1 in a thousand fatal accidents.

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The new CPSC Pool or Spa Submersions: Estimated Injuries and Reported Fatalities, 2013 Report indicate that 75% of victims of drowning in a pool or spa are younger than 5 years old. Government data also show that the majority of African American and Hispanic children between 5 and 14 years old don’t know how to swim and therefore have a much higher risk of drowning in a pool.

Every year more than 5000 children visit the emergency room after a pool or spa related injury and an estimated average of 390 children drown. Most of the accidents happen in backyard pools.

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In its new pool safety campaign, The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is asking parents and families to teach their children how to swim, to install a fence around backyard pools and spas and to watch children when they play around the pool.

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Diagnostic errors are not a new problem, in 1991 the Harvard medical Practice Study, investigated Medical Malpractice in New York Hospitals and found out that diagnostic errors were accounting for 14% of physicians errors and that 75% of them were due to doctors negligence.

In 1999 a study from the Institute of Medicine “To Err is Human”, looks at diagnostic errors and classifies them in four different categories: error or delay in diagnosis, failure to employ indicated tests, use of outmoded tests or therapy and failure to act on results of monitoring or testing.

Despite these studies, diagnostic errors have been largely ignored until recent research calculated the impact of such errors. Results from a 2009 report funded by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality showed that 28% of diagnostic mistakes were life-threatening or had resulted in death or permanent disability.

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After 4 children died and 360 suffered injury in 1200 strollers incidents that occurred from 2008 through 2012, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recently proposed a federal safety standard for strollers.

The report of incidents would scare any mother or caregiver. In one of the fatal accidents the head of the infant became entrapped between the seat and the tray. In the second fatality the infant’s head was wedged between the car seat of a travel system and a metal bar located under the cup holder. In the third accident the stroller collapsed on the child resulting in asphyxiation. In the fourth incident the stroller fell off a dock and the child drowned, however there were not sufficient details to define whether incident was product related.

Among the non fatal incidents reported injuries were mostly lacerations requiring stitches, tooth extractions, fractures head injuries and partial amputation of fingers.

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Temporary workers have a high risk of suffering fatal injury on their first days of work because they are untrained and not aware of hazards specific to the workplace. Often employers failed to provide safety training to temporary workers or, if some instruction was given, it inadequately addressed the hazard, and this failure contributed to their death.

OSHA recently launched a new initiative to protect temporary workers from work hazards. Among the new measures created, field inspectors will assess if employers using temporary workers are complying with their responsibilities under the Occupational Safety and Health Act and will check that training is provided in a language that the temporary worker can understand.

OSHA indicated that in recent months, they have received an increased number of reports of temporary workers being killed on their first days in a new position. One of the highest profile cases was the death of a 21-year-old temporary worker in August 2012 at the Bacardi Bottling’s plant in Jacksonville. Lawrence Daquan “Day” Davis was crushed to death by a palletizer machine on his first day at work.

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A new version of the Construction Chart Book: The U.S. Construction Industry and its workers was recently released by the Center for Construction Research and Training.

Here are some of the most interesting findings and graphs related to Fatal and Nonfatal Injuries:

– Electrical Power-Line installers are the most at risk to die in a construction accident

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A recent study on safety in hospitals conducted by Consumer Reports shows that hospitals are not a safe place to be.

For this study Consumer Reports magazine ranked more than 2000 hospitals based on the following criteria:

-Infections aquired in hospitals
-likelyhood to be re-admitted in 30 days
-communication issues around drugs and discharge
-likelyhood to get too many CT scans
-likelyhood of complications

Dr John Santa, director of Consumer Reports’ Health Ratings Center, was recently on “CBS This Morning” (see video below) to express his concerns.

In the New York area, out of 70 hospitals studied, 58 hospitals rank below the national average when it comes to safety.

Among these hospitals 27 out of the 28 teaching hospitals are scoring below average with some of them among the worst of the nation. The only teaching hospital in the New York region that scores above average is the the Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, NY with a safety score of 58 out of 100.

Teaching hospitals are supposed to lead by example as they are training the future doctors of our nation. It is an alarming fact that most teaching hospitals in the New York area are actually the most unsafe in the country.

In the New York area, the worst teaching hospitals when it comes to safety are the Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. with 22 points, the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center Health Care System in the Bronx, N.Y. with 25 points, the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y. with 28 points, Harlem Hospital Center in New York City with 28 points and the Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. with 29 points.
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