Posts Tagged ‘malpractice’
Friday, July 11th, 2008
Another report of Heparin overdosing of premature babies, this time involving up to 14 babies at Christus Spohn hospital in Corpus Christi. Two of the overdosed babies, twin siblings, have died.
“Christus Spohn (Health System) confirms that an error occurred during the mixing process in our hospital pharmacy,” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard Davis said in a prepared statement. “The error was unrelated to product labeling or packaging.”
The Texas Legislature in 2003 - pumped full of special-interest money and controlled by the insurance and business lobbies - passed laws limiting the damages that victims of medical malpractice can recover from negligent health care providers. Unfortunately, they took no steps to try to ensure less negligence or better healthcare.
Tags: malpractice, Medical negligence
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Friday, May 16th, 2008
According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners , companies selling medical malpractice insurance in Texas made $807,325,106 profit in the first three years following tort reform. In 2006, more than 50 cents of every dollar collected was profit.
Tags: insurance, malpractice, texas
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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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Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
A group of 11 plaintiffs, including the family of ex Dallas Cowboys player Ron Springs, filed suit recently in U.S. District Court in Marshall to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s medical malpractice caps.
The Houston Chronicle has a story here. The article suggests that the non-economic cap of $250,000 is per defendant, which is not the case. The $250,000 cap is per claimant (including all derivative plaintiffs such as spouses and children of the injured patient), no matter how many doctors or health care providers are sued. There is - in theory - the potential to stack two limits for a $500,000 cap, but I have yet to see a scenario where that would apply…nor have I heard of any across the state. And in some lobbyist’s fantasy world, there is a magical place where an injured patient could - just maybe - stack three limits for a $750,000 recovery. It’ll never happen, but that was part of the snake oil the insurance lobbyists sold elected officials and voters when tort reform passed in 2003.
In any event, hats off to the plaintiffs in Marshall.
Tags: Dallas, malpractice
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Here’s an interesting article from CNN series “Empowered Patient.”
Since “tort reform” passed in 2003, it’s made it extremely difficult for many injured patients to find competent lawyers to file medical malpractice suits. I’ve lost count of how many injured folks we’ve had to turn away because the expenses of bringing a malpractice suit far outweigh the potential recovery because of damage caps. This article offers some suggestions on steps an aggrieved patient might take with the doctor and/or hospital to make things somewhat right.
I would add to those suggestions that patients can contact the Texas Medical Board and file a complaint against a physician. The Board, at least ostensibly, is supposed to investigate and reprimand negligent physicians.
Tags: doctors, lawyers, malpractice
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