Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

The November 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine discusses a new study that suggests that the use of electronic health records (EHRs) may help reduce paid malpractice settlements for physicians. An abstract of the article can be found here.

The study examined 1140 practicing Massachusetts physicians in 2005, and after controlling for potential confounding variables, the authors found a trend favoring EHR use--although the result was not statistically significant. In addition, since a small number of physicians in both groups were queried, the authors have only placed "cautious" emphasis on the results.

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Hospital infections are on the rise and so are lawsuits that claim medical malpractice caused the infections. The Wisconsin Law Journal recently reported that "A new type of med-mal lawsuit is on the increase -- claims based on hospital infections." According to the Law Journal, "Plaintiffs' attorneys say that hospitals can no longer argue that these infections are inevitable."

Betsy McCaughy, founder and chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, said, "This is the next asbestos. Now that the evidence is overwhelming that nearly all infections are preventable, hospitals that don't follow the proven protocols are inviting lawsuits."

Sadly, most of these infections can be prevented through stricter sanitary and bacterial testing procedures.

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