The lawsuit involving Mark G. Midei, MD, and unnecessary stent procedures for St. Joseph Medical Center patients, has settled after six weeks of trial.
Senate Bill 1792 would change requirements for expert witnesses, and enable attorneys to question patients' subsequent healthcare providers.
A total of $3.6 billion was paid out for medical malpractice lawsuits in 2012, and 48% of those payouts occurred in five states.
A clinician prescribes an antidepressant to a young woman without immediate follow-up.
In an effort to improve care and avoid errors, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston is revealing its mistakes in a newsletter called "Safety Matters."
Senate Bill 1792 proposes changes to expert witness criterion, reqs for interviewing physicians and the way medical information can be subpoenaed.
A bill originally passed in 2005, but struck down by the state's Supreme Court, would put a $350,000 limit on non-economic damages.
In response to a federal initiative, a school clinician immunizes a child—but without parental consent.
A clinician finds herself culpable after agreeing to an unorthodox arrangement with a patient.
The bill allows patients, providers or health care facilities to report medical errors to the Oregon Patient Safety Commission to begin confidential settlement negotiations and mediation.
A Brooklyn woman with a missed lung cancer diagnosis was unable to file a malpractice suit under New York state's statute of limitations.
Medical identity theft and data security breaches are growing, with thousands of cases reported per year.
Surgical and medication errors down, but suicide up in Minnesota's annual adverse medical event report.
Senate Bill 438 proposes the state create patient safety commission to discuss and mediate malpractice incidents before cases go to trial.
An elderly man opted for "no heroics" if things went wrong in surgery, but his family felt differently.
Hogan alleges he underwent several unnecessary endoscopic procedures that destabilized his injured back and significantly damaged his earnings potential as a professional wrestler.
What do you do when patient charts have been changed after the fact and medication doses altered?
During an average career spanning 40 years, clinicians will spend more than 10% of the time with an unresolved malpractice claim.
U.S. surgeons make mistakes, such as leaving a foreign object inside a patient's body or performing operations on the wrong part of the body, frequently.
A malpractice suit involving a physician who prescribed antidepressants without seeing his patient for years serves as a warning against overmedication.
The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority Report identified 3,946 electronic health record-related medical errors from 2004 to 2012.
A New York court ruled in a favor of a patient who sued her physician for medical malpractice after their affair ended.
An eager, young clinician makes a serious mistake that causes a heart attack.
Court dismisses concerns that medical malpractice expert panels exert too much pressure on juries.
Details of the implementation of pay for performance incentive programs and the context in which they are introduced may have an important bearing on their outcome.
Who is at fault when an unattended patient is found cyanotic and unresponsive?
When clinicians feel safe with their supervisor, they are more likely to report errors - creating a stronger commitment to safer practices and lower future error rates.
Children hospitalized with chronic medical conditions are more likely to be affected by medical errors than those who are hospitalized but don't have a chronic condition.
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in favor of reducing the damages awarded to a patient who had the wrong ovary surgically removed from $759,679 to $334,679.
A woman in her early 60s presented with chest pain and was miscategorized in the emergency department.
More than one in four patients included in a metaanalysis had at least one missed diagnosis at the time of death in an intensive care unit.
Can clinicians sue a patient who originally took them to court for malpractice, but then dismissed the case?
An Ohio medical center has temporarily suspended its living donor kidney transplant program after a nurse accidentally threw out a kidney.
One nurse found out the hard way that any breach of privacy is grounds for dismissal.
Miscommunication among hospital staff was cited as the top reason why respondents believe most medical mistakes occur.
The program allows clinicians to acknowledge making a mistake without it being used as an admission of liability.
According to the decision, the cap "infringes on the jury's constitutionally protected purpose of determining the amount of damages sustained by an injured party."
A lack of communication between a surgeon and an anesthetist has disastrous consequences.
Many hospitals scored fewer than 50 points on the 100-point hospital safety scale, which rated facilities based on their performance in six categories.
The new law incentivizes defendants in medical malpractice cases to make settlement offers early in the litigation process to cut back on the time, expenses and uncertainty associated with malpractice lawsuits.
Was a clinician negligent in the administration of a standard drug used for treating pancreatitis?
A steadfast clinician gets into trouble when she examines a minor without express verbal consent.
Including a patient photograph on a verification screen in electronic health records could help prevent clinicians from placing incorrect orders.
A Bronx jury awarded close to $120 million to a woman who suffered brain damage after being treated at three New York area hospitals.
Medical malpractice lawsuits can take anywhere between 20 months to 44 months to be resolved, study findings suggest.
Accusations of racial discrimination are raised against an unsuspecting supervisor.
Employing professional translators for non-English speaking patients in hospital emergency departments (EDs) reduces miscommunication and errors, study results suggest.
Consumer rights groups contend that declines reflect a nationwide reduction in malpractice lawsuits, but the Pennsylvania judiciary attributes the changes to two rules implemented in 2003.
Seven healthcare systems in Massachusetts will formally pilot a project that will attempt to resolve medical liability issues without malpractice trials.
A former airman who lost his legs due to a botched gallbladder surgery is challenging the Feres Doctrine and suing the U.S. government, the Air Force and the David Grant Medical Center for medical malpractice.
New York state spent the most in malpractice payouts in 2011.
Clinicians' ability to provide patient care may be impaired immediately after surgical catastrophes, but few report receiving time off.
Malpractice laims in which an indemnity payment was made were associated with higher mean defense costs -- $45,070 vs. $17,130 -- an analysis reveals.
A patient undergoing myocardial perfusion imaging claims the IV led to nerve damage.
A serious accident during a patient's discharge leads to potentially life-threatening injuries and a lawsuit.
Many clinicians fear that an apology could be used against them if a malpractice lawsuit occurs.
Research and initiatives in ambulatory safety were remarkably limited between 2000 and 2010, both in quantity and in the ability to generalize from the studies that were reported.
Thirty of the nation's 50 lowest-scoring hospitals on patient safety are located in New York City and adjoining communities in West Chester, Long Island and New Jersey.
By utilizing an administrative rather than judicial process for medical malpractice claims, Florida's newly proposed patient compensation system would closely model the state workers' compensation program.
The Minnesota State Board of Medical Practice is accused of not adequately disciplining health-care providers that practice substandard medicine.
If the ruling passes, health care providers will not be responsible for cost of living expenses for healthy or unhealthy children born when a clinician fails to properly communicate the results of prenatal screenings or fetal risk factors.
When a patient does not comply with medical recommendations, how do you protect yourself?
A nurse's careless mishandling of medical evidence jeopardizes a criminal rape case and causes undue emotional harm.
A jury in Wyoming recently ruled in favor of Louis Prager, a 51-year-old field worker, awarding him and his wife a record-breaking $9 million in damages after an ED physician at a regional hospital did not order neck X-rays or CT scans after an accident.
A New York attorney allegedly stole $70,000 after his clients refused settlement money.
Clinicians sometimes use their smart phones and tablet computers for personal matters — checking social networking websites, news and even airfare prices while on the job — in a phenomenon termed "distracted doctoring."
Many more medical errors are reported when the process is anonymous and the health-care environment is nonpunitive, study results indicate.
Medical errors, including pressure ulcers and leaving surgical instruments in patients, increased in Indiana hospitals despite statewide programs intended to reduce mistakes.
Judge-directed negotiation programs consist of a judge with malpractice expertise helping facilitate negotiations between both parties, without imposing settlement amounts. If the parties are not happy with the process, they can opt to have the case go through the court system in the normal manner.
Post-surgical complications from a routine procedure and lack of follow-up land a clinician in court.
The Department of Health and Human Services shut down public access to its National Practitioner Data Bank in September 2011, stating concerns about the media's ability to "triangulate" confidential data using court records to reveal classified information.
A young clinician working in a depressed urban area gives medical advice over the phone to a mother concerned about her child's abdominal pain, and then must pay the consequences.
A recent white paper from AC Group, a Texas-based health IT research and consulting firm, suggests that the rushing to implement electronic health records (EHRs) may actually expose physicians to a greater risk for malpractice lawsuits as many introduce technically inadequate EHRs that are missing important components.
Failure of physicians and patients to receive diagnostic test results, delays in reporting findings, and lengthy turnaround times for receiving diagnostic test results are among the top reasons researchers identified for the approximate 40% increase in malpractice payments based on diagnosis that occurred between 1996 and 2003.
An employee at the medical malpractice firm representing cardiologist, Mark Midei, MD, who has been accused of performing unnecessary stent procedures, misplaced a hard drive containing patient medical records. Should law firms be subject to HIPAA regulations?
A doctor with Lambert Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome was mistakenly administered insulin by a nurse who neglected to read a note in his medical history specifying the patient could not receive the drug.
Exorbitant pain and suffering awards have been blamed for high clinician insurance premiums and increases in overall health insurance costs, but a new report shows that capping payments did not solve these problems.
Can a clinician be sued for battery if a patient objects to a medical treatment, even after giving consent?
Public Citizen has alerted California Gov. Jerry Brown that the state's medical board has failed to take action against more than 700 health care providers who were disciplined for wrongdoing between September 1990 and the end of 2009.
An eager, young clinician learns the hard way that discretion is the first rule of law in medicine.
The family of a 20-year-old Florida woman who died during child birth is appealing a claim that capped the amount of awarded pain and suffering damages they could receive.
Although medical malpractice lawsuits are common, payments are not — only about 20% of cases analyzed in a recent New England Journal of Medicine study resulted in an indemnity payment.
If a patient has a nonfunctional arteriovenous (AV) shunt in one arm and a functional shunt used for dialysis in the other, does the avoidance of an IV access in the arm with the nonfunctional shunt still apply?
The new licensure process will be based on a practice agreement developed in conjunction with a supervising physician and filed with the Oregon Medical Board, eliminating archaic language that required that each PA's scope of practice and supervision requirements be determined by the state medical board.
House overrides governor's veto, limiting malpractice awards for noneconomic damages to $500,000.
Patients will soon have access to detailed clinician histories online, including information on past malpractice lawsuits.
Many patients seek clinician approval before undertaking various fasting and detoxification regimens.
Senate Bill 33 to cap noneconomic malpractice damages vetoed after governor calls legislation "unbalanced."
Outpatient malpractice claims increased from 41.7% to 43.1% from 2005 to 2009, whereas hospital malpractice claims decreased from 49.3% to 47.6%.
West Virginia has upheld a 2003 law capping damages for pain and suffering at $250,000 (or $500,000 in more serious cases) in a lawsuit involving a man who developed rhabdomyolysis from adverse medication interactions.
A juror was arrested in the middle of a medical malpractice trial and accused of soliciting bribes in order to procure a plaintiff's verdict.
PAs now treat approximately 10% of the total patient population that visits the emergency department each year; yet ED physicians sometimes view these clinicians as a professional threat.
The number of malpractice payments made on behalf of doctors in 2010 is the lowest on record since the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen began tracking these payments in 1990, yet health care costs continue to rise.
The United States Supreme Court is considering whether to hear a case that would challenge the doctrine that prevents lawsuits against military medical personnel.
Two new bills addressing malpractice reform issues have been passed by the Florida legislature and are currently awaiting the signature of Governor Rick Scott (R).
A physician whose wife was disfigured in an operating room fire has issued a press release and a television ad protesting North Carolina Senate Bill 33, which limits the caps on pain and suffering regardless of whether they resulted in disfigurement, mutilation, loss of limb, paralysis, pain, suffering, blindness or death.
In an ideal world all we would have to think about is good medicine, but in the real world with the current healthcare system, keeping an eye on the bottom line is part of our job.
Navigating social media is especially tough for young professionals. Did a nursing student cross the line?
Two clinicians failed to refer a longstanding patient, even though they knew of a history of familial risk.
Tragedy strikes when a clinician signs an athlete's release form without waiting for test results.
