Posts tagged Medical Malpractice

• 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...

• Anesthesia Error - a Deadly Form of Malpractice

  Ken Margolin | November 06, 2006 12:30 PM | 1 CommentBoston, MA Category: Head & Brain Injuries
  

  Anesthesia errors, fortunately, are not everyday occurrences. When they do happen, the results are often catastrophic. Since a serious anesthesia mistake often causes deprivation of oxygen to the patient, death or brain damage can be the end result. To the great credit of the anesthesia profession, it was anesthesiologists who led the way to modern methods of medication error reduction....

• Solutions to the Medication Error Crisis

  Ken Margolin | October 09, 2006 12:48 PM | 1 CommentBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Medication errors injure an estimated 1.5 million Americans each year. That staggering number is reported in studies conducted by the medical profession and pharmaceutical industries themselves. While there is no single cure for this terrible problem, borne ironically, of the tools used to cure disease, the steps to be taken to greatly reduce the problem have been understood for more than 10...

• Charitable Immunity is Unjust

  Ken Margolin | September 19, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Protecting charitable organizations from liability for the negligence of the organization or its employees, may sound noble, but is in fact, unfair. The immunity doesn't really accomplish its goals, and insures that employees of an organization involved in a personal injury lawsuit, will be sued instead of the organization. Here's the way it works in Massachusetts. By statute, M.G.L. c. 231,...

• Hospital Falls

  Ken Margolin | September 17, 2007 3:45 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Head & Brain Injuries
  

  A great deal of attention has been paid lately - rightfully so - to the subject of infections contracted in hospitals. Less focus has been placed on another source of serious and preventable injuries in hospitals - falls. The result of a fall down injury in a hospital may be severe. Patients are ill and often debilitated or disoriented to begin with. If a patient's condition presents any...

• Deadly Medication Errors

  Ken Margolin | September 14, 2007 6:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  The problem of medication errors has by now been well-reviewed, and efforts to minimize such errors are underway in hospitals and doctors' offices across the country. Nevertheless, the problem of medication errors has proven to be a very stubborn one. In his groundbreaking book, "To Err is Human," Lucien Leape, M.D., estimated that medication errors caused approximately 98,000 deaths per year....

• A Medical Malpractice Claim Lost

  Ken Margolin | August 21, 2007 3:15 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  A couple of weeks ago, a Suffolk County Superior Court jury in Boston, rejected the claim of former New England Patriots offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis, that doctors botched his gastric bypass surgery. The defense verdict came at the end of the second trial of the case. The first jury hearing the case was deadlocked, leading to a mistrial. Weis had claimed that his surgeons allowed...

• The Power of Exhibits

  Ken Margolin | August 20, 2007 11:15 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  I wonder if anyone has ever calculated the number of words per hour spoken during the average jury trial. The right words, used the right way, can evoke the most powerful of images, associations, and emotions. Words can also drone on and become little more than background noise to the listener. The lawyer trying a case involving catastrophic personal injury, has a challenge. He may need to...

• Wrong Site Surgeries

  Ken Margolin | August 06, 2007 4:10 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  An article in Saturday's Boston Globe illustrated the gap that sometimes exists between written procedures and implementation. The article also highlighted the ongoing danger from surgeries on the wrong part of a patient's body. Five hundred fifty-two cases of wrong-site surgery have been reported by American hospitals since 1995; there are undoubtedly many unreported cases. The incident covered...

• Failure to Communicate can be Deadly

  Ken Margolin | July 12, 2007 9:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Imagine a plane crash in which the co-pilot knew of another plane on a collision course, but decided not to tell the pilot, figuring he'd get the information on his own. Imagine a firefighter knowing a roof is about to collapse, but failing to warn his colleagues because he thought his colleagues were highly skilled and the signs of impending collapse were obvious. Unthinkable? Of course. Yet,...