Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

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A fascinating column in the November issue of Consumer Reports magazine offered a frank call for more openness in medicine. Dr. John Santa, an internist who also directs the magazine’s Health Ratings Center, wrote: “Until our health care system gets its act together, patients and their families will have to be constructively assertive to get to the bottom of any mishaps.”

The reason for this, Dr. Santa writes, is that American medicine has developed a professional culture that is very reluctant to acknowledge error. Doctors and nurses fear professional consequences. Administrators, in turn, fear that publicizing mistakes will make medical professionals even more reluctant to report them. Ultimately, the real losers, he writes, are patients, who “deserve to know what happened and that the doctor or hospital is trying to rectify the situation.”

Dr. Santa also offers a series of helpful, common sense suggestions for patients, among them: “Enlist family members to keep track of your care” and “Know what medicine you’re taking and tell your doctor or nurse if you don’t recognize what you’re given.”

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An update on an issue I wrote about last month (click here to see the original post from November 21): as part of the last minute maneuvering to round up 60 votes for health care reform legislation in the US Senate, the measure ending the health insurance and medical malpractice insurance companies’ exemption from anti-trust law was dropped from the bill.

The measure was originally proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and supported by Oregon’s Attorney General. It would have made the legal situation surrounding Oregon medical malpractice more favorable to patients by ending an exemption from anti-trust law that health insurance companies and medical malpractice insurance companies have enjoyed since the 1940s. The exemption makes it much harder for Oregonians who have been injured through medical malpractice to sue insurance companies or for families to sue in the event of a loved-one’s death.

Leahy, backed by a number of state attorneys general, proposed repeal of the exemption when the Senate began its debate on the health care reform bill last month. Retaining the exemption, however, was one of the conditions that Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) extracted from party leaders as a condition of his vote to end a Republican filibuster against the bill.

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An obscure provision being debated today in the US Senate could have a major effect on Oregon medical malpractice. If approved, it could become easier for Portland medical malpractice attorneys to help clients win the compensation they deserve.

The proposal, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, would repeal the WWII era McCarran-Ferguson Act, which exempts both health insurers and medical malpractice insurers from antitrust law. Though the proposal has received little publicity, it recently got a boost when ten state attorneys general, including Oregon’s John Kroger, wrote Leahy (who chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee) urging approval of the repeal. When debate on the health care bill began in the Senate Saturday morning Leahy was among the first speakers and devoted his remarks to the proposal.

According to Leahy, and the attorneys general, repeal of the exemption would allow the government to crack down on “flagrant anti-trust violations, including price-fixing, bid rigging and market allocations.” The attorneys general’s letter called for repeal of the exemption to make “antitrust enforcement the same here as for virtually all other industries, enhancing competition to the benefit of consumers.”

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The parents of a 3-year-old boy that died after surgery have agreed on a $200,000 Portland, Oregon wrongful death settlement with the doctor that performed the procedure. Ian McClellan died from septic shock 8 days after Dr. Jayant Patel perforated the 3-year-old’s bowel while trying to insert a feeding tube inside him. The surgical malpractice incident took place on February 5, 1999.

This is not the first Oregon medical malpractice lawsuit naming Patel as a defendant. Also, in 2000 the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners barred the surgeon from working again in the state. He eventually moved to Australia where he kept performing surgeries. He has been charged with manslaughter in that country over the deaths of three patients. Patel has been called “Dr. Death.”

Per Matthew and Anna Maria McClellan’s Oregon medical malpractice involving fatal injuries to minors lawsuit that they filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Patel discovered the perforation the day after the surgery when he opened up their son again. They say that Patel and the hospitals told them that Ian died because he developed a postoperative infection. It wasn’t until April 15, 2005 when the Oregonian began publishing a number of articles about Patel’s work that they discovered the real reason their son died. The McClellans had originally sued Patel and the hospitals for $1.55 million.

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A leading cause of pediatric malpractice is a birth defect that isn’t often discussed but occurs more often than one would think: Malrotation, which involves the abnormal alignment of the bowel. This usually happens while the fetus is growing. This birth defect can also be hereditary. Occurring in 1 in 500 live births (like cerebral palsy), most cases are diagnosed by the time the baby turns one.

However, it is not uncommon for pediatricians to misdiagnose or delay diagnosis of this potentially deadly bowel condition and mistake malrotation for a mild illness, such as acid reflux. The only way to untwist the bowels if the malformation is serious is through surgery and when treatment is delayed, the defect can be fatal if blood flow to the intestines is blocked for too long. In many instances involving a misdiagnosed malrotation, a child with this birth defect end up having to be rushed to an emergency room.

Signs of Malrotation:

• Abdominal pain
• Projectile vomit that is green or yellow in color
• A bloody stool
• A swollen abdomen
• Rapid breathing or heart rate
• Drawing up of the legs
Malrotation can also result in other complications, such as Ladd’s bands, volvulus, and obstruction caused by either of these complications. The sooner malrotation is diagnosed, the better the chances that a child will recover fully and develop normally.

Pediatric Malpractice:
Your son or daughter deserves the proper medical care and when a pediatrician or another doctor is careless or makes a mistake that causes injury or death, the medical care provider should be held liable for the injuries to your child. Grounds for pediatric malpractice can include:

• Surgical errors
• Birthing injuries
• Meningitis
• Negligent care
• Delayed diagnosis
• Wrong diagnosis
• Prescription mistakes
Malrotation: Potentially fatal bowel condition often misdiagnosed as mild ailment, Chicago Sun-Times, April 21, 2009
Intestinal Malrotation, KidsHealth
Related Web Resources:
Malrotation

Malrotation and Volvulus, The American Pediatric Surgical Association

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According to doctors and nurses at Providence Health & Services, newborns at Oregon hospitals appear to be at risk of falling. Hospital records from Providence Hospitals indicate that 20 fall accidents involving newborns occur each year in Oregon hospitals—a figure that some researchers consider a low estimate because parents and hospital staffers don’t always report newborn falls when they occur.

In a scientific study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, reporters noted that some 600 to 700 newborn falls occur at US hospitals each year. Examples of newborn falls include babies:

• Falling out of bassinets while they are being rolled down a hallway or onto an elevator.
• Dropping onto the floor during delivery.
• Slipping through the delivering doctor’s hands and onto the ground.
• Falling out of a sleeping parent’s arms.

While the report doesn’t cite any specific fall accidents at hospitals that resulted in infants sustaining serious injuries, one newborn did sustain a skull fracture. However, a 2003 article on the Whitaker Foundation’s Web site found that babies are vulnerable to traumatic brain injuries during falls when the head hits a hard surface. Traumatic brain injuries also happen to be one of the leading causes of childhood deaths.

Dr. Robert Christensen and his colleagues at Intermountain Healthcare says that newborn falls are preventable and that there are measures that hospitals can take to prevent fall accidents from happening. For example, ordering nurses to regularly check on infants that are being held by parents during the night, changing bed designs to minimize fall accidents, and modifying sedative drug use by new mothers.

Oregon hospitals, doctors, and nurses are supposed to provide newborns with the proper care following delivery. This includes implementing the proper safety procedures so that injury accidents do not happen. If medical error, negligence, or carelessness results in serious injuries to your son or daughter, you may have grounds to file an Oregon medical malpractice claim or lawsuit.

Other injuries to newborns that may be grounds for medical malpractice include:

• Birthing injuries
• Forcep injuries
• Facial paralysis
• Brachial palsy
• Cerebral palsy
• Injuries caused by heparin (or another drug) overdose
• Fractures during labor
• Wrongful death
Hospitals look into ways to prevent newborn falls, The Oregonian, November 19, 2008
Infants More Vulnerable to Serious Brain Injury From Falling Than Previously Thought, The Whitaker Foundation, August 12, 2003
Related Web Resources:

Newborn Injuries, Family Practice Notebook
Birth Injuries

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The estate of Bend man Stephen Brenn is suing orthopedic surgeon Dr. Anthony Hinz for almost $10 million for Brenn’s wrongful death. The lawsuit has gone to trial.

Brenn died in 2006. The complaint accuses Hinz of negligence when he performed elective ankle surgery on Brenn. Brenn died just hours after the procedure.

Brenn’s estate has already reached a settlement agreement with St. Charles Medical Center-Bend. The trial now goes forward to determine whether Hinz and the nurses that gave Brenn pain medication were responsible for his wrongful death.

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50 SW Pine St 3rd Floor Portland, OR 97204 Telephone: (503) 226-3844 Fax: (503) 943-6670 Email: matthew@mdkaplanlaw.com
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