Study: Doctors lie to patients

Doctors sometimes lie to their patients. That acknowledgement came to light recently in the results of a nationwide survey of some 1,800 physicians in which one in 10 doctors said they had told a patient "something that was not true" in the past year. And it got worse. While in some cases doctors fibbed simply to buoy a patient's spirits by putting the best possible spin on their condition, the

NYC paid $135M for 246 medical mistakes

New York City paid out $135 million in the past fiscal year for medical mistakes at its public hospitals. That's an increase of about 5 percent from 2010, according to a report in The New York Daily News. The payments covered 246 medical blunders, many of which were catastrophic for the patients. In one case, a Brooklyn man suffered a debilitating stroke while waiting hours to see a doctor at

Bad doctors go undisciplined by med boards

An investigative report in The Kansas City Star recently found that Kansas and Missouri doctors with significant histories of alleged malpractice often go undisciplined by the states' licensing boards. What's more, the newspaper noted that although the boards have access to malpractice claims information, they don't share the information with the general public. The report focused on the case of

Med-mal caps can’t be applied retroactively, court rules

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that caps on medical malpractice damages cannot be enforced retroactively. Defense attorneys had argued that Florida's $1 million cap on awards for medical mistakes applied to the case of a man whose heart was irrevocably damaged when he wasn't given critical medicine at Palms West Hospital. The incident occurred in 2003, three months before the legislature

Illinois expands Internet info on doctors

If patients in Illinois want to know more about their doctors, all they'll have to do is go on the Internet. Gov. Pat Quinn recently signed a bill called the Patients' Right to Know Act which requires that all physicians have online profiles that will include whether they have criminal records or any history of medical malpractice lawsuits. Illinois previously had such a law but it was struck

Back operation goes awry, surgeon settles

Eileen Kelleher had elective back surgery in 2005. But problems arose after the procedure in the intensive care unit, where she suffered intra-abdominal hemorrhaging, abdominal wounds and other severe complications. She charged in a medical malpractice lawsuit that the problems were not adequately diagnosed or treated by the medical staff or the surgeon who performed the operation. The result was

CA board fails to discipline doctors

Over a 10-year period, 710 California doctors had their privileges restricted by their hospitals or other medical entities but the number of those doctors who were disciplined by the state medical board seems alarming. The number is zero. Not one of the physicians was ever disciplined by the state regulators. Included among those doctors were 102 who were considered an "immediate threat to health

Medical malpractice turns routine hysterectomy fatal

School teacher Victoria Lynn Brown Harmon checked into a North Carolina hospital for what she thought would be a routine hysterectomy. She was sent home the following day, but she had pain and returned to Lake Norman Regional Medical Center. Doctors attempted to find the problem and they did -- Harmon's bowel had been perforated during the surgery. But by the time doctors discovered what went

Pennsylvania man wins jury verdict over lost leg

A jury in Cambria County, PA, awarded a man $633,525 in a medical malpractice lawsuit in which he claimed that negligent care resulted in his leg being amputated above the knee. The lawsuit was filed by Ronald Duerring, who is in his 60s and has an extensive medical history including vascular disease. Duerring was admitted to one hospital, then another in late 2006 for severe pain in his right

Even sanctioned doctors rarely disciplined by state boards

The majority of doctors sanctioned by their own hospitals escape any discipline by state medical boards. So noted a recent report by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which examined data over a 20-year period (1990-2009). It found that 10,672 physicians were listed in the National Practitioner data Bank as having had their clinical privileges restricted or revoked by their hospitals but

Toothache leads to death, medical malpractice settlement

A 41-year-old Colorado man who sought treatment for an abscessed tooth ended up dying after suffering a brain injury during oral surgery. The incident happened in 2008 when Simon Medrano went to the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine complaining of pain and inflammation from his tooth. A doctor at the school tried to extract the tooth but encountered difficulty and transferred

Deadly chicken pox case results in medical malpractice verdict

Michelle Koenig, a 20-year-old Illinois woman, went to the hospital with a skin ailment. An emergency room doctor at Provena St. Mary's Hospital told her that she had a rash and sent her home. Two days later she was dead. The rash, it turned out, was chicken pox, a serious case of the virus that spread to her liver and killed Koenig. A jury recently returned a $1.5 million verdict in the medical

California medical malpractice cap backfires

Some lawmakers in Washington are using California as an example of the supposed benefits of capping damages for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases at $250,000. But a recent case in that same state shows the pitfalls of such a limit. The case involved 17-year-old Olivia Cull, who lapsed into a coma and died after a routine catheterization procedure at Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA

Philadelphia medical malpractice verdict reached

A Philadelphia jury has handed down a verdict for a 72-year-old woman who died in the hospital after doctors failed to treat an internal bleed until it was too late. The recent award was for nearly $5.2 million for Sandra Sacks, who suffered retroperitoneal bleeding following an elective cardiac catheterization performed in October 2007. Sacks had complained of abdominal and groin pain after

Surgeon admits wrong kidney was removed

A slip of a pen resulted in a surgeon removing the wrong kidney during an operation on a young boy in Ireland. The surgery proceeded on the wrong kidney despite concern voiced before the procedure by the child's parents. The doctor, Martin Corbally from Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Dublin, admitted his error after the wrong-site surgery was performed and apologized to the family. He said he

Medical malpractice settlement over sponge left in judge

A recent report estimates that roughly 1,500 hospital patients in the United States each year have surgery only to find later that a foreign object was left behind -- inside them. The most common item left in patients' bodies are sponges. But very few are as large as the sponge left inside 67-year-old Floridian Nelson E. Bailey, who five months after surgery for a digestive disease -- and

Knee replacement results in medical malpractice verdict

What was supposed to have been a routine knee replacement surgery resulted in a botch job and months of agony for an Ohio patient. Sandra Banfield went for the operation in 2004, but when a doctor removed her knee and went to implant an artificial titanium joint, he noticed it was too small and he could not make it fit. So the surgeon instead inserted cement spacers and closed the wound with

NY prosecutor victim of medical malpractice

A former county prosecutor was steps from the state capital in New York when he suffered a fatal heart attack. The cause, a jury found, was in part his doctor, who had previously improperly interpreted a stress echocardiogram that had been performed on George Dentes, the popular former Tompkins County district attorney. The jury awarded his widow $1.4 million in a medical malpractice suit. It

NYC hospital program: Admit errors quickly

Five hospitals in New York City have come up with a novel way to try to cut medical malpractice costs -- admit when they make mistakes. The hospitals recently announced a pilot program in which they will divulge medical errors early and quickly offer payments to settle the cases. They program includes special state courts in which judges will try to help negotiate settlements to avoid taking

Botched artery procedure leaves woman paraplegic

Victoria Little entered a Maryland hospital for surgery for blocked arteries to prevent a major future ailment. But a botched procedure instead left the 53-year-old woman a paraplegic, with some feeling in her legs but in constant pain and unable to walk. Two surgeons in the case said that what occurred was an unpreventable complication, but Little hired an attorney who investigated and claimed