Posts tagged Medical Malpractice

• Dropped Clues Lead to Medical Malpractice and Patient Death

  Ken Margolin | May 23, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  A doctor can no more afford to ignore clues provided by his patient, than a homicide detective can fail to dust the crime scene for fingerprints. The best internists would undoubtedly make great detectives. When the body provides clues that something is not working properly, the doctor must follow the clues until he diagnoses the cause of the troubling symptom. In fairness to physicians, the...

• Caesaren Section Issues

  Ken Margolin | May 21, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Caesaren sections, commonly termed "C-sections," have been around for centuries. There are reports of C-sections being performed as early as the 13th century. Early C-sections were performed to remove babies from the wombs of mothers who had died during childbirth. Modern Caesaren sections, of course, are a great life-saver for mothers as well as babies. As with all advances in medicine,...

• Communication Breakdown Results in Death - Medical Malpractice Settlement

  Ken Margolin | May 09, 2007 9:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Failures to communicate continue to bedevil the medical profession. Patient deaths and injuries due to communication breakdowns are especially tragic, because the preventative measure, was often as simple as picking up a telephone or sending a note. In an era of multi-million dollar technology and advanced bioscience, person-to-person communication remains a cornerstone of good medical care....

• Charitable Immunity - a Failed Principle

  Ken Margolin | April 17, 2007 11:05 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Most catastrophic instances of medical malpractice, are due as much to systemic failures, as to the negligence of any individual. Yet, you will never see a hospital as a defendant in a Massachusetts malpractice jury trial. The hospital - almost all in Massachusetts are non-profit corporations - will not have been named in the lawsuit, or will have been dropped before trial. Regardless of the...

• Wrong-Side/Wrong-Site/Wrong-Procedure/Wrong-Patient

  Ken Margolin | April 11, 2007 10:35 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Although wrong-side/wrong-site/wrong-procedure/wrong-patient (WSPE) hospital errors are not common, they occur more often than one would expect. As the phrase implies, WSPE typically means that the right patient has been operated on the wrong side or organ, or that the correct procedure was done - correct for a patient other than the one on whom it was performed. When WSPEs occur, the results...

• Jury System Still Safe in Massachusetts

  Ken Margolin | April 10, 2007 2:45 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  I got a momentary scare the other day, when I read of a Supreme Judicial Court decision upholding a binding arbitration contract between a nursing home and the son of an elderly parent admitted to the home. Binding arbitration agreements require that if there is a dispute between the parties, resort to the courts and juries is waived in favor of submission to a professional arbitrator. The case...

• Fake Studies for Medical Malpractice Defense

  Ken Margolin | April 09, 2007 11:20 AM | 2 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Today's Boston Globe carried an article with the title, "Bed sores aren't always a sign of negligent care." Having written blogs on this site, suggesting that severe pressures sores are usually caused by nursing home negligence, I read the Globe piece carefully (the law firm of Stark & Stark, has an excellent blog on the subject). My radar went up when I read the sentence that "[T[he sentiment...

• Massachusetts Personal Injury Update

  Ken Margolin | April 04, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Verdicts and settlements reported in this week's Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly newspaper, show the continued appreciation by jurors, of the terrible impact that severe injuries can have on the victim's enjoyment of life. Obstetrical negligence resulted in permanent neurological injuries to an infant, when the obstetrician failed to go to the hospital in a timely manner to deliver his patient's...

• Don't Let your Rights Slip Away

  Ken Margolin | March 23, 2007 5:40 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Most people have heard the term "statute of limitations," and have a vague idea that it creates some kind of time limit for legal action. Many people do not realize, however, how devastating a statute of limitations can be when it expires and extinguishes the right to pursue a valid lawsuit. Victims of a serious injury, or their family members, often suffer a type of emotional numbness when it...

• Missed, and Mis-Diagnoses

  Ken Margolin | March 19, 2007 1:30 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  There was an excellent article written by Dr. Jerome Groopman, of Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, in today's Boston Globe, about the causes of medical misdiagnoses. When mis-, or missed, diagnoses occur, they can be deadly. The problem, writes Dr. Groopman, often stems from rigidity in the way doctors think about the symptoms presented by their patients. Dr. Groopman identifies three...