Archive for the ‘medical malpractice’ Category
Thursday, July 17th, 2008
Good article today on CNN with tips patients and their families can take to help reduce the chances of surgical errors. Remember the old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Patients becoming their own advocates is especially important these days here in Texas, where “tort reform” has made it next to impossible to pursue legal claims against a doctor or hospital for medical malpractice. Lawmakers stripped away patients’ rights but forgot to do anything to help reduce malpractice in the first place. And with the for-profit hospitals cutting staff and jamming patients into OR’s and the doctors having to see more patients to make up for the discounted fees the insurance companies force on them, patients and their families need to be as proactive as possible to avoid errors.
Tags: medical malpractice, patient advocacy
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Friday, March 14th, 2008
Actor Dennis Quaid recently appeared on “60 Minutes” to discuss his kids’ medical malpractice case (follow the link to a video clip of part of his interview with Steve Kroft).
Quaid twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace nearly died last November at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles when they were mistakenly given a massive drug overdose.
Quaid believes such mistakes occur too often. “They happen in every hospital in every state in this country and…I’ve come to find out, there’s 100,000 people a year killed…in hospitals by medical mistakes,” he tells Kroft. “It’s bigger than AIDS. It’s bigger than breast cancer. It’s bigger than automobile accidents and yet, no one seems to be really aware of the problem,” says Quaid.
The Quaid twins were mistakenly given the drug Heparin, an adult-strength blood thinner, instead of Hep-lock, a version of the drug a thousand times weaker that’s routinely used to clear IV lines in pediatric patients. It caused the infants, who were in the hospital for a suspected infection, serious hemorrhaging. “Our kids are bleeding from everyplace that they’ve punctured…They were working on Boone, whose belly button would not stop bleeding…blood squirted across the room…. It was blood everywhere,” recalls Quaid. “It was a life-and-death situation.”
Tags: doctors, malpractice
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Thursday, October 4th, 2007
Because of a mislabeled tissue sample that led to a misdiagnosis, Darrie Eason of Long Island, New York had both of her breasts removed to save her from a cancer that she never had. Story here.
Thanks to insurance industry “tort deform” that swept through Texas in 2003, non-economic damages in a medical malpractice suit like Ms. Eason’s would be capped at $250,000. That’s right: All the pain and suffering, all the disfigurement, all the impairment, all the damage to her marriage, everything, is worth $250,000 tops, thanks to the 2003 Texas Legislature.
Think this is a frivolous lawsuit?
Tags: medical malpractice, tort reform
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