Medical Malpractice

Family of Boy Who Died from Staph Infection To File $25 Wrongful Death Million Lawsuit

November 2, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The family of a 12-year-old boy that died from a staph infection is going to sue the city of New York with a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit.

Omar Rivera’s mother, Aileen Rivera, says she will sue the city because doctors at Kings County Hospital Center misdiagnosed his illness. Omar Rivera died on October 14 at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center.

His mother had taken the 7th grader to the hospital because she wasn’t satisfied with the care that he was getting at a clinic, which belongs to New York City’s public hospital system.

She says that the doctor at Kings County Hospital Center misdiagnosed Omar’s illness—identifying it as an allergic reaction rather than an infection. Because of this misdiagnosis, no tests were ordered. Omar was given Benadryl for his skin lesions. Omar died of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA)

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a kind of bacteria that is resistant to certain antibiotics, such as methicillin, amoxicillin, penicillin, and oxacillin.

Symptoms can include boils or pimples. MRSA can cause infections in different areas of the body. Although most cases of MRSA are not fatal, some cases can lead to death.

Wrong Diagnosis

Misdiagnosing a patient can be a serious problem—especially if the wrong diagnosis results in the patient sustaining injuries, becoming more ill, or dying. A wrong diagnosis can cause doctors to give a patient the wrong medication or treatment. A sick person may have to undergo more serious treatment or surgery if his/her condition worsens because the correct diagnosis wasn’t made in time. A person’s chances of survival could decrease with a misdiagnosis.

Mother Plans $25M Lawsuit After Son Dies From Staph Infection, Fox News, October 30, 2007
Family to sue for $25 million over boy’s staph death, CNN.com, October 30, 2007
Understanding MRSA (Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), WebMD

Related Web Resource:

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), CDC

19-Year-Old Student Sues Howard University Hospital, GW Hospital, and Washington D.C. for Medical Malpractice and Negligence

October 23, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

A 19-year-old Howard University female student is suing Howard University Hospital, the District, and several doctors for medical malpractice and medical negligence. She claims that the University and District were negligent because several doctors at area hospitals committed medical malpractice by refusing to treat her with a rape kit even though she told them she had just been sexually assault.

The student—whose name is being withheld because she is a sexual assault victim—says that GW Hospital refused to treat her because she allegedly appeared intoxicated. In her complaint, the woman claims that she was given a date rape dug while she was at a party located outside the Howard campus. One of the party’s hosts then sodomized her without her consent.

The student immediately went with two witnesses to Howard University Hospital for treatment. They allegedly sent her home without administering the rape kit because she was intoxicated. She tried obtaining a rape kit from the hospital again in the morning and once again they refused to treat her.

The District mandates that all hospitals contact police regarding sex assault claims before administering the rape kit. Howard University Hospital did not contact local authorities.

When the assault victim contacted the Metropolitan Police Department, they also said that they didn’t think she needed a sexual assault kit.

The student then drove to GW Hospital where a doctor examined her but also refused to administer the rape kit because police and Howard University Hospital did not give the kit to her.

The plaintiff says that she was denied the reasonable medical care that she is legally entitled to.

In the lawsuit, GW Hospital is accused of refusing to treat the student because doctors said she seemed intoxicated. The student is suing the University and the hospital for negligent hiring.

She wants compensatory damages. She also wants GW Hospital to modify its rape treatment policies. She says that the hospital staff’s refusal to treat her may have prevented authorities from catching her rape assailant.

A rape kit is used to take semen, tissues, and blood samples to identify the perpetrator.

Doctors, nurses, surgeons, dentists, and other medical staff members are required to provide patients with a reasonable level of medical care that is expected from other medical members in their position. Failure to do so can be grounds for medical malpractice.

Some other common grounds for medical malpractice claims and lawsuits include failure to diagnose, wrongful diagnosis, delayed diagnosis, surgical malpractice, prescription errors, birth injuries caused by negligence, and failure to receive proper patient consent.

GW sued for negligence, malpractice, GWhatchett.com, October 4, 2007
Student Sues Hospitals For Refusing Her A Rape Kit, WUSA9.com, October 23, 2007

Related Web Resources:

Howard University Hospital

George Washington University Hospital

Drugs Prescribed by Doctors Can Sometimes Cause Birth Defects

September 28, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center say that out of close to 500,000 women, nearly half of them were not informed by their doctor that a certain prescription drug could lead to birth defects. Failure to inform them of this potential side effect could have led to patients not taking the proper care to prevent pregnancy while taking the prescription drug.

Common drugs that can lead to birth defects if used during pregnancy include:

• Acne medicines
• Antibiotics
• Sleep aids
• Cholesterol drugs
• Blood thinners

Failure by a medical provider to inform you of certain risks associated with a prescription drug might be grounds for a medical malpractice claim or lawsuit if injuries or death results.

The study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study’s authors did concede that their method of research might have skewered their discoveries. Data was drawn from insurance company billing records, and it is possible that doctors did not use the proper insurance codes to indicate that they had advised a patient about a medication’s side effect.

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) classifies drugs according to the risks they pose for causing birth defects. It is possible, however, for a doctor to be too busy to look up a drug’s FDA classification.

Based on the studies’ results, family doctors and internists were more likely to prescribe high-risk drugs to women ages 15-44. Dermatologists, obstetricians, and psychiatrists were not as likely to prescribe high-risk drugs to females of childbearing age.

If a drug prescribed by your doctor proves to be a defective or dangerous drug, and you become ill or your child is born with a birth defect because of the defective medication, the negligent doctor and the pharmaceutical company could be held liable.

Common medical errors that can lead to medical malpractice cases:

• Errors in ordering medications
• Errors in implementing laboratory investigations
• Filing system errors
• Errors in responding to abnormal laboratory test result
• Errors in ordering medications
• Errors in communicating with patients about treatments
• Errors in communicating between care providers in different settings
• Wrong diagnosis
• Delayed diagnosis
Prescription Drug Birth Defect Risks Not Always Known to Women, Newsinferno.com, September 25, 2007
Types of Medical Errors Commonly Reported by Family Physicians, The Robert Graham Center

Related Web Resource:

Medical Malpractice Overview, Justia

Annals of Internal Medicine

Four Patients Die After Improper Use and Prescription of Painkiller Drug FENTORA

September 13, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Drug manufacturer Cephalon Inc. is reporting that four people died after they improperly used FENTORA, a powerful painkiller. Cephalon says that FENTORA, newly approved by the FDA, is only supposed to be used by cancer patients that are already taking prescription narcotics, such as morphine, for their pain.

According to Cephalon, two of the patients that died were prescribed FENTORA to treat their headaches. One of the victims used more than the recommended dosage. The other person that died committed suicide. None of the victims were being treated for cancer.

Cephalon says that the deaths are not connected to allegations (still under investigation) that the manufacturer improperly promoted FENTORA and other drugs to be used in ways other than what the FDA has approved and included on labels.

Since October 2006, physicians have written approximately 78,000 prescriptions for FENTORA pills. The FDA is watching the situation.

Medical Errors

The U.S. Institute of Medicine says that at least 98,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes.

Some of these mistakes involve errors related to prescription medicine, such as:

• Issuing a prescription for the wrong dosage amount
• Prescribing the wrong pharmaceutical drug
• Writing down the name illegibly so that the pharmacist misreads the medicine name
• Not finding out a patient’s medical history
• Not finding out whether a patient is allergic to a certain drug
• Prescribing the wrong series of treatment
• Filling a prescription incorrectly with the wrong medicine or the wrong dosage
• Giving a patient someone else’s prescription

Medical errors made by a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, surgeon, medical lab technician, or another health care provider can lead to serious injuries and death. Victims of a medical error should speak to a medical malpractice attorney immediately to find out if they have grounds to file a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit.

Listed on the FENTORA Web site are key points provided by Cephalon, Inc. regarding use of the drug:

• Do NOT use FENTORA in opioid non-tolerant patients
• Use FENTORA only for labeled indications
• Do not prescribe FENTORA for patients with acute pain, postoperative pain, headache/migraine, or sports injuries
• FENTORA is not a generic version of Actiq. Therefore, do NOT substitute FENTORA for Actiq or other fentanyl-containing products
• Follow dosing instructions carefully:
• For unrelieved breakthrough pain (BTP), patients should NOT take more than
2 FENTORA tablets per BTP episode
• Patients MUST wait at least 4 hours before treating another BTP episode with FENTORA

A medical malpractice case or a personal injury case caused by a pharmacy misfill is not the kind of personal injury case that should be handled without the help of a personal injury lawyer that is experienced in dealing with medical errors, negligence, and carelessness.

Painkiller maker reports 4 deaths of patients, USA Today, September 13, 2007

Related Web Resources:

Cephalon Reinforces Important Prescribing and Dosing Information for Fentora, Cephalon.com, September 13, 2007
Fentora, Fentora.com

Rehabilitation Hospital in Maryland Comes Under Fire After Patient Dies From Malnutrition

September 12, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The Adventist Rehabilitation Hospital of Maryland could lose its Medicare funding. Investigations by the state have found that some of the hospital’s patients have not been getting the proper diets ordered by their physicians, and this oversight may have caused their health problems to worsen. One of the hospitals patients, 29-year-old Julian Frazier, died in December from malnutrition.

The Adventist HealthCare system has 77-beds at its facilities in Takoma Park and Rockville. It also has outpatient centers. At Adventist, patients are treated while they recover from spinal cord injuries, strokes, traumatic brain injuries, war injuries, and other conditions.

Adventist called Frazier’s death an isolated incident. Frazier, a high school math teacher, was being treated for organ damage after suffering from pancreatitis. He lost his ability to walk and almost died.

Last November, he was admitted to Adventist after a gastroenterologist decided that he needed more care. He was 75 pounds underweight at the time of his admission and doctors had said that he needed to eat as much as possible or undergo intravenous feeding and other “interventions” otherwise.

According to state inspectors, he does not appear to have been given the prescribed diet at Adventist. He also was supposed to be weighed every week but there are no records to indicate this occurred. Frazier had diarrhea and was vomiting.

A gastroenterologist that examined Frazier on December 5 said that his body was swollen and he had severe malnutrition. His blood pressure started to go down and he started having difficulties with his vision. Frazier died of cardiac arrest.

According to the state report, Frazier was at a “severe and unrelenting risk of starvation” and Adventist did not intervene.

Other patients that reportedly were suffering from malnutrition at Adventist:

• A patient treated with dialysis lost 22 pounds in one week even though Adventist was supposed to be monitoring any weight loss. Investigators say the patient got a more restrictive diet than what the doctor prescribed.

• A diabetic was fed a meal that was high in carbohydrates even though the doctor had ordered that the patient be fed a balanced diet. Too many carbohydrates can raise a diabetic’s blood sugar.

If you are patient at a hospital, rehabilitation facility, nursing home, elder care facility, or any other care facility where you are receiving medical or rehabilitative care, the doctors, nurses, and care providers are legally obligated to provide you with the care that you have been prescribed. They are not allowed to neglect your care and feeding or deny you the medical care that you need. Failure to do so can be grounds for a medical malpractice claim or a wrongful death lawsuit.

Children At Psychiatric Hospital in Washington D.C. Might Be In Danger of Injury and Abuse

July 27, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

University Legal Services, Inc., an advocacy group for Washington D.C. children that have developmental disabilities, say that children at Riverside Hospital are in danger of “serious and persistent abuse and neglect.” City mental health officials will now begin to visit the hospital on a weekly basis to monitor the conditions there. Riverside Hospital treats youths up to 21 years of age.

The advocacy group’s report recounts incidents of physical violence (punching, slapping, choking, pushing) and verbal abuse by staff members and the use of physical restraints and seclusion to control patients’ behavior. Not enough supervision allegedly allowed teens to hurt themselves, steal bottles of medicine, and attack other patients. Treatment plans were supposedly not followed and living conditions at the facility were allegedly unsanitary and unhealthy.

Last December, one teen resident died at the hospital. The Department of Mental Health says the female teenager became ill last November and was sent to Georgetown University Hospital where she was placed on a ventilator. She was then taken by air to Inova Fairfax Hospital for cardiac surgery. She died the following month.

The department says that the hospital failed to order basic tests, document the teenager’s vital signs, tell a doctor that her condition was getting worse, or note down that she had a family history of heart disease.

Riverside hospital is a private, for-profit hospital.

When a person is seriously injured while staying at a hospital because of negligence on the part of any staff members, he or she may be eligible to file a personal injury claim or a medical malpractice lawsuit.

Doctors, nurses, and medical staff members are required by law to provide proper care to their patients—medically, emotionally and psychologically. If that care is abused or not properly given, the negligent party could be sued for negligence or malpractice—depending on the type of abuse or neglect that occurred.

Some causes for a personal injury lawsuit can include:

• Nursing home abuse
• Negligence
• Physical abuse
• Verbal abuse
• Neglect
• Sexual abuse
• Rape
• Financial abuse
• Wrongful diagnosis
• Failure to diagnose
• Failure to administer proper care
• Physician error
• Surgical error
Youth Hospital Faulted For Abuse, Washington Post, July 26, 2007

Related Web Resources:

Department of Mental Health, Washington D.C.

Riverside Hospital, Washington D.C., Hospital Data
University Legal Services

Baltimore Obstetrician Found Liable for Medical Malpractice Is Ordered to Pay $8.1 Million

May 21, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Last week, a jury found Dr. Emerson R. Julian, Jr., an obstetrician and former city councilman, liable for medical malpractice. He has been ordered to pay $8.1 million to the parents of a baby boy who suffered brain damage during a challenging delivery at Mercy Medical Center in 2003.

Baby Caleb Spence’s shoulders had gotten stuck in his mother’s birth canal—this is known as shoulder dystocia. When this happens, the baby’s breathing can become obstructed and doctors are known to try different techniques to deliver the baby as soon as possible. According to Caleb’s family, Dr. Julian applied an extraction technique that is considered dangerous. Dr. Julian disputes this claim.

Because of Maryland law, however, the damages are limited to just above $2.1 million because of a cap on awards for pain and suffering.

According to the plaintiff’s medical malpractice lawyer, Baby Caleb Spence died one year after his birth due to a respiratory illness connected to his permanent brain damage.

Mercy Medical Center agreed to pay an out-of-court settlement last year, of which the terms are confidential.

Medical malpractice can occur when a doctor or other medical provider neglects to properly care for a patient during treatment or when their treatment causes a patient to grow ill or their condition or injury to become worse. Other incidents of medical practice can include failure to properly diagnose (or delay in diagnosing) an illness, surgical errors, delivery errors, and errors in treatment, prescription, and care.

If you have been a victim of medical practice or someone you love has died because of a medical provider’s error, carelessness, or neglect, it is important that you speak with an experienced medical malpractice lawyer who can evaluate your case for you and file a claim on your behalf.

Who Can Be Held Liable for Medical Malpractice:

• Doctors
• Nurses
• Pharmaceutical companies
• Health care facilities and providers
• Hospitals
• Anesthesiologists

Malpractice Juries Have A Tendency To Vote In Favor Of Doctors, Says Researcher

May 3, 2007 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Philip Peters, Jr., from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, says that juries tend to believe doctors more than plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases—contrary to popular belief in the medical communities that juries usually favor plaintiffs.

He says he found that the majority of malpractice suits end in defense verdicts and that the cases with the weakest evidence are usually the ones that go to trial—since cases where there is solid evidence are usually settled beforehand.

He conducted his research to test the assumption that juries did not have the capacity to fairly assess medical malpractice claims. His reports will be published in the Michigan Law Review this May.

Peters examined numerous data, including 8,231 medical malpractice lawsuits filed in New Jersey from 1977-1992 against doctors insured by the now-defunct Medical Inter-Insurance Exchange. Results showed that a plaintiff was more likely to get a favorable verdict if there was a stronger evidence of negligence.

According to Peters, however, juries had a tendency to defer to doctors and were likely to rule in favor of the defendant in cases where the plaintiff’s evidence was weak. He also said jurors occasionally might find doctors credible because of their social status or the fact that they have better attorneys and witnesses. He also said that jurors might be skeptical about a patient that would sue their doctor.

Peters also did conclude, however, that jurors in medical malpractice claims are not incompetent and that favoritism and randomness were not factors affecting the outcome of these cases.

Medical Malpractice Claims Attributed To 60% Physician Error In New Report

October 19, 2006 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine says that in almost 60% of cases, basic doctor-related errors played a role in incidents where patients were allegedly injured due to delayed or missed diagnosis.

Researches reviewed 307 medical malpractice claims from four U.S.-based malpractice insurance companies:

· 187 of these claims allegedly involved diagnostic errors that ended up harming patients

Maryland Malpractice Suit Filed By Family After Man Addicted To Painkiller Commits Suicide

May 30, 2006 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The family of a Bel Air man who committed suicide after becoming addicted to a prescription painkiller is filing a medical malpractice suit against his doctor.

Ken Jones was addicted to OxyContin when he shot himself in the chest on March 2003. The painkiller was prescribed to him by his doctor who was treating Jones for back pain.

Before committing suicide, Jones, then 48, had written a note saying that his doctor knew he was addicted to OxyContin but continued to increase his prescription dosage.