Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

The LA Times reports, “Firms that supply temporary nurses to the nation's hospitals are taking perilous shortcuts in their screening and supervision, sometimes putting seriously ill patients in the hands of incompetent or impaired caregivers” (12/6, Weber and Ornstein).

The problem is worsened by nursing shortages and lacksidasical regulation, but the temporary firms “have become havens for nurses who hopscotch from place to place to avoid the consequences of their misconduct. An investigation by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times found dozens of instances in which staffing agencies skimped on background checks or ignored warnings from hospitals about sub-par nurses on their payrolls. Some hired nurses sight unseen, without even conducting an interview.”

Nurses with documented poor history who are rehired by another unsuspecting organization subject ill people to the perils of their recurring bad habits, including charting drug administration to patients, but stealing the pain killers for personal use.

As a Chicago attorney who has experience with similar medical negligence cases, I am saddened by this phenomenon. Although some places are more diligent than others about checking their nurse’s backgrounds prior to hiring them, those who don’t subject innocent patients to careless, irresponsible, and malicious behavior, which gives the entire industry a bad reputation.

The Colorado Spring Gazette (7/2) reports, “Federal officials Thursday warned that about 5,700 surgery patients, including 1,000 at a Colorado Springs surgery center, are at risk of having been infected by an operating room technician with hepatitis C,” because the surgery tech admitted to swapping her dirty syringes filled with saline for syringes filled with Feltanyl, a narcotic that is 100 times stronger than morphine. She was a former heroine addict who admitted that she was virtually positive she had previously been exposed to Hepatitis C years before.

Hundreds of surgery patients got only saline and exposure to Hepatitis C instead of pain killers during post operative care, while the surgery tech injected herself with their painkillers both at home and in hospital bathrooms before surgery. She was discovered when another surgery tech reported her for being in an operating room to which she was not assigned. She was then tested for drugs and tested positive for Feltanyl.

The Colorado hospital released statements expressing their apologies and extreme sorrow for the infected patients and their families. The hospital is offering free testing to surgery patients, and has set up a phone help line for patients and their families. Unfortunately, exposure to the Hepatitis C virus, for which there is no vaccine, can lead to extremely severe consequences including but not limited to chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. Between 75 to 85 percent of those who contract Hepatitis C will develop chronic infection. Hepatitis C is responsible for between 8,000 and 10,000 deaths per year in the United States.

As a medical malpractice lawyer, it is my opinion that this horrible situation could have and should have been avoided. Even a simple check of her myspace page would have revealed that she has a “crazy fascination with needles” because she “just like[s] the way they feel.” Moreover, a recovering heroin addict is certainly not some one that should be permitted to handle strong narcotics, and such drugs should be carefully monitored within the hospital.

Rosanne M. Leipsig, a physician and professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, published an article in the New York Times (7/1) commenting on the fact that “American medical schools require no training in geriatric medicine,” even though elderly patients make up a substantial component of all patients for which graduating doctors will care. She and some of her colleagues published a “Don’t kill Granny” checklist in the Journal of Academic Medicine, which laid out the basic requirements all graduating medical students should demonstrate in caring for elderly patients.

All doctors in training are “required to have clinical experiences in pediatrics and obstetrics, even though after they graduate most will never treat a child or deliver a baby. Yet there is no requirement for any clinical training in geriatrics, even though patients 65 and older account for 32 percent of the average doctor’s workload in surgical care, 43 percent in medical specialty care, and they make up 48 percent of all inpatient hospital days. Medicare…contributes more than $8 billion a year to support residency training, yet it does not require that part of that training focus on the unique health care needs of older adults.”

For Example, an experienced doctor needs to be aware that a 50-year-old body will respond differently than an 80-year-old body to both illness and medication. “Pneumonia in a 50-year-old causes fever, cough and difficulty breathing; an 80-year-old with the same illness may have none of these symptoms, but just seem ‘not herself’ - confused and unsteady, unable to get out of bed.” Not only are the symptoms different by age, but also the dosage of medication; a 50-year-old body can handle nearly twice as much medication as an 80-year-old body. Over prescribing medication to any patient, but especially one who is elderly, can cause severe kidney damage with long-term health consequences.

As a medical malpractice lawyer with experience in cases dealing with elderly care, I support a geriatric care requirement in medical schools. As the baby boomers get older, geriatric care is only going to become more important.

The Washington Post reports (AP, 6/20), “staff members at a Brooklyn hospital falsified medical records and lied to authorities in an attempt to cover up the neglect of a patient who died on the waiting room floor.” Esmin Green, age 49, suffered for almost 24 hours in a psychiatric emergency room at the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York before collapsing from a blood clot.

According to witnesses and waiting room camera footage, Ms. Green was lying “on the floor for an hour, in full view of nurses, doctors, and security guards, before a nurse nudged her body with her foot, then checked her pulse. By then she was dead.” 6 hospital employees lost their jobs in connection with this incident, and some may face criminal charges.

Shortly after Ms. Green died, a senior nurse at the hospital made three falsified entries in the medical records “to make it appear as though she had been checking regularly on her patient.” Security camera footage confirmed that these entries were in fact false. A nurse’s aid separately falsified the record claiming “he had observed Ms. Green asleep during the hour when she was actually lying face down on the floor dying.” Both later admitted to authorities that the records were false.

As a medical malpractice lawyer in Chicago, I am deeply disturbed by the events leading up to the death of Esmin Green. I am hopeful that the legal proceedings in this case will ensure that such careless actions by hospital staff are never repeated.

Medicare threatens to revoke University of Chicago Medical Center's certification after patient's death.
The AP (3/28, Robinson) reported, "Medicare officials are threatening to take away the University of Chicago Medical Center's certification after the death of a man who sat in the emergency room for hours without being logged in, a center spokesman said." The patient's "wheelchair was parked within sight of the triage desk for 'a few hours' but...he was neither triaged nor logged in." He was later "pronounced dead" after his "daughter finally brought him to attention of the triage nurse." In a letter to the center, the federal government warned that "the center's Medicare certification could be lifted," but the spokesman stated that "such a warning was standard whenever such an incident took place."

"The Joint Commission, the major accreditor of US hospitals...said it was investigating the incident," the Chicago Tribune (3/28, Japsen) noted. The hospital claimed that an investigation by the Illinois Department of Health on Feb. 18 "found proper policies and procedures were in place but that staff members may not have followed the protocol." But, the letter indicated that "the hospital failed to 'maintain a central emergency services log' and 'provide a medical screening exam.'"

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.

Continue reading "Hospital infection lawsuits on the rise" »

A Chicago transplant patient filed a medical negligence suit this week against the University of Chicago Medical Center and one of its surgeons, alleging that she contracted HIV and hepatitis C after receiving a kidney from an infected donor.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the hospital knew that the donor, who was homosexual, was in a high-risk group but withheld the information from the patient. According to the lawsuit, had the patient known of the true nature of the donor's lifestyle and the risks associated with receiving his kidney, she would not have consented to the surgery.

Four transplant recipients contracted HIV from the donor, whose infection went undetected in what hospital officials say is the first documented case of the virus being transmitted by organ donation in the U.S. in more than 20 years. Tests conducted on the donor returned negative results probably because the HIV and hepatitis were contracted near the time of death and hadn't had the opportunity to progress. The suit charges medical malpractice for failing to notify the woman of the donor's high-risk behavior and for failing to test her for HIV three months after the transplant—which is recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention when organs are donated by high-risk donors.

Continue reading "Patient sues Chicago Hospital, doctor for contracting HIV and hepatitis from infected kidney donor" »

A recent wrongful death case involving claims that a doctor failed to diagnose prostate cancer settled for $875,000. The decedent’s estate claimed a hospital and treating physician failed to perform annual prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing in the two years before the diagnosis.

The facts alleged that the plaintiff underwent regular annual physicals. But, when he was 52, he underwent a digital rectal exam and was then diagnosed as having metastatic prostate cancer. He underwent treatment but died six months after his diagnosis. He was survived by his wife and two adult children. The parties settled before suit was filed.

Continue reading "Failure to perform timely PSA tests leads parties to settle wrongful death case for $875,000" »

The families of two newborns who died after they were inadvertently given massive doses of Heparin have sued an Indianapolis hospital and the Illinois-based company, Baxter Healthcare Corp., that makes the blood thinner.

The Chicago Tribune reports that parents of two of the three newborns who died in September 2006 filed suit after injections of heparin that were 1,000 times greater than the recommended dose for infants were administered. Also suing are the parents of two infants who were overdosed but survived. The error occurred in part because of a mix up over labeling, which Baxter changed in October 2007.

Baxter recalled all its heparin vials in February after receiving contaminated ingredients from a supplier, Baxter officials said.

Continue reading "Hospital and Illinois Drug Company sued for Heparin overdoes" »

Shaya Tayefe Mohajer of the Associated Press recently reported that 18 hospitals in California were fined for state health code violations where patients received sub-par care that in some cases, led to death. Violations included an improperly inserted catheter, a ventilator that wasn't turned on and surgical sponges left inside patients after operations. The report also found some patients experienced awareness during their procedures due to improper anesthesia.

The fines were the latest of dozens of penalties the state issued in recent years to more than 40 hospitals. The report detailed a death at a hospital in which a worker failed to turn on the ventilator for a patient who was being transferred. At another hospital, a patient died after falling from a wheelchair with no seat belt on, and another of the fined hospitals lost a patient from a medication overdose. In what appears to be an epidemic of poor healthcare, at another hospital, a registered nurse improperly inserted a catheter into a patient's neck vein, which caused an air bubble and lead to the patient’s death. The California Department of Health investigation found the nurse had not completed a required anatomy class or the hospital's training on protocol for catheters.

The hospitals were fined $25,000 for each violation. If you have questions relating to medical malpractice please contact the Illinois Medical Malpractice Attorneys at Hurley McKenna & Mertz, P.C.