Medical Malpractice e-Resource

Medication Errors Rampant and Dangerous

According to a story in today's New York Times, Medication errors harm 1.5 million people and kill several thousand each year in the United States, costing the nation at least $3.5 billion annually, the Institute of Medicine concluded in a report released on Thursday.

Drug errors are so widespread that hospital patients should expect to suffer one every day they remain hospitalized, although error rates vary by hospital and most do not lead to injury, the report concluded.

The report, "Preventing Medication Errors," cited the death of Betsy Lehman, a 39-year-old mother of two and a health reporter for The Boston Globe, as a classic fatal drug mix-up. Ms. Lehman died in 1993 after a doctor mistakenly gave her four times the appropriate dose of a toxic drug to treat her breast cancer.

Recommendations to correct these problems include systemic changes like electronic prescribing and tips for consumers like advising patients to carry complete listings of their prescriptions to every doctor's visit, the report said.

"The incidence of medication errors was surprising even to us," said J. Lyle Bootman, dean of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy. "The solutions are complex and far-reaching and will present challenges."

The report is the fourth in a series done by the institute, the nation's most prestigious medical advisory organization, that has called attention to the enormous health and financial burdens brought about by medical errors.

The first report, "To Err Is Human," was released in 1999 and caused a sensation when it estimated that medical errors of all sorts led to as many as 98,000 deaths each year -- more than was caused by highway accidents and breast cancer combined.

Read the NY Times Story http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/health/21drugerrors.html?ex=1153627200&en;=af14b5fd984cd3a6&ei;=5087%0A

Read the Report from the Institute of Medicinehttp://www.nap.edu/catalog/11623.html#toc

Tort Reform Denounced by Harvard Study

The Harvard University has been getting a lot of play in the media lately. Its been miscontrued and ourtight lied about by politicians pushing for tort refrom. For example, in Oklaoma a politician recently cited the study as saying that 40% of claims are frivilous and this study evidences the need for tort refrom. His assertions are blatenlty false and probably derived to him from his employer when he is not at the capitol, an insurance company.

In reality the study reviewed more than 1,400 medical malpractice cases handled by five insurance companies over a 20-year period (from 1984 to 2004) and found that 40 percent of those lawsuits involved no medical
error."

The study also found that 27% of malpractice cases go unpaid, now how much effect is this having on our tax dollar since these people do need treatment.

As you can see from the article, in actuality "FOR 3% of the 1400 claims studied there were no verifiable medical injuries, and 37% did not involve errors. Most of the claims that were not associated with errors (370 or 515
[72%]) or injuries DID NOT result in compensation."

CONCLUSION: "Claims that lack evidence or error are not uncommon, but MOST ARE DENIED COMPENSATION. The vast majority of expenditures go toward litigation over errors and payment of them."

The Discussion goes on to note that "only a small fraction of claims lacked documented injuries" and of the Claims without merit that were filed, 1 in 4 resulted in payment. When close calls were excluded, claims without
evidence of injury or error accounted for 13% of total litigation costs.

"Our findings point toward two general conclusions. One is that portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation ARE OVERBLOWN. A second conclusion is that the malpractice system performs
reasonably well in its function of separating claims without merit from those with merit and compensating the latter. 3/4 of the litigation outcomes were concordant with the merits of the claim."

"Our findings suggest that moves to curb frivolous litigation, if successful, will have a relatively limited effect on the caseload and costs of litigation. The vast majority of resources go toward resolving and paying claims that involve errors. A higher-value target for reform than discouraging claims that do not belong in the system would be streamlining the processing of claims that do belong."

Business groups to keep pushing malpractice reform

Washington Bureau
Legislation to cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases failed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate, but business groups promised to keep fighting for the bill.

Wayne malpractice rates fall

The Detroit News
Doctors get break, but premiums remain among nation's highest, contribute to physician shortage.

Great Article on Medical Malpractice.

The following is a great excerpt from an article from consumeraffairs.com about a medical society fabricating numbers to encourage tort reform:

Routine Procedure Turned Deadly

Nancy and Shelby Medlin took their healthy 3-year old son, Max, to the hospital for a routine outpatient dental procedure. Due to his young age, Max was anesthetized. Soon after Max awoke, Nancy knew something was terribly wrong with her baby. The staff tried to tell her that she was just an overly paranoid mother, but she know better and persisted in trying to get quality care for her son. Four hours later, the doctor finally came to see Max, but it was too late. Tests concluded he was brain dead. The next day, Max was pronounced dead. Suddenly Nancy and Shelby were living every parent's worst nightmare.

Caps don't work

A study published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in August 2005 shows that capping contigent fees isn't helping accomplish tort reform. In fact they found just the opposite. The AEI study found that contingent fees:

Malpractice forum produces options

Key players in Washington's 4-year-old battle over medical malpractice insurance offered up a few new -- or slightly freshened up -- solutions Tuesday to keep doctors at work and patients safe.

Top ideas:

Court Strikes Down Caps on Malpractice Awards

The Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed out the state's cap on some medical malpractice awards Thursday, prompting health-care officials to warn the decision could lead to huge verdicts against doctors and exploding costs for patients.

Congressional Watchdog Agency Finds Claims of Malpractice Insurance "Crisis" Not Substantiated

A General Accounting Office (GAO) study showing that medical groups manufactured a crisis to push their agenda of changing the medical malpractice insurance system is further proof that Congress and state legislatures should abandon efforts to take away patients' legal rights, Public Citizen said today.

New Study Debunks Claims of an Impending Medical Malpractice Insurance "Crisis" in Rhode Island

Contrary to the alarmist rhetoric spread by the state's medical and business lobbies, the temporary malpractice insurance spikes experienced by doctors in many states are not on the horizon in Rhode Island, according to a report issued today by Public Citizen, a national consumer advocacy organization. The report concludes that instead, the most significant, long-term medical malpractice "crisis" in Rhode Island is the unreliable quality of care being delivered to state residents by a relatively small proportion of the state's doctors.

Jury Awards $11 Million to Child With Cerebral Palsy: Nurses didn't monitor mother properly

After deliberating for about seven hours, a Philadelphia common pleas jury decided that a local hospital was 100 percent negligent in causing a newborn's cerebral edema and subsequent cerebral palsy. The jury awarded nearly $11 million dollars.